Category: E-Mail

Net Neutrality Day

Today's the Net Neutrality Day of Action.

Here's what I said about net neutrality during the open comment period in 2014, before the Title II rules passed, when the FCC was pushing a policy that would allow ISPs to charge websites for fast lanes:

This is exactly the kind of policy you get when you put a cable company lobbyist in charge of the FCC: a plan nobody but the cable companies could possibly want, and that seeks to make the Internet work like cable TV.

This plan has no benefit whatsoever to consumers. Cable companies demand extortion money from content providers; the providers who are willing and able to pay pass that cost on to their consumers (as Netflix has already done by raising its streaming subscription price), and the providers who aren't are put at a crippling disadvantage. You can bet the ever-increasing bottom dollar on your cable bill that if Comcast had had the opportunity to demand a premium from YouTube to stream video in 2005, we wouldn't be talking about YouTube today -- though maybe that would have been good news for Real Networks, as we'd probably still be limping along on the vastly inferior RealPlayer. Buffering...

This proposal is a government handout to the kind of companies that need it the least: monopolies and near-monopolies that already provide poor service at exorbitant prices, and suffer no market backlash for the simple reason that they provide a necessary service and have no competition.

Google doesn't want this. Microsoft doesn't want this. Netflix doesn't want this. Amazon doesn't want this. Consumers don't want this, and small businesses sure as hell don't want this. The only ones who DO want this are the cable companies who pick our pockets every month -- and their former employees like Chairman Wheeler.

And here's what I said during the open comment period this year, with the FCC preparing to repeal the Title II rules and, once again, proposing Internet fast lanes:

Seeking public comment? This is a farce. Chairman Pai heard exactly what the public had to say in 2014. The public responded, overwhelmingly, in support of net neutrality; indeed, the public interest was so high that the traffic brought down fcc.gov.

If Chairman Pai cared what the public thought, he would not be reversing a rule supported by the public in order to grant more power to internet service providers, some of the most despised companies in America. Nobody wants this except Comcast, AT&T, Charter, and Time Warner.

There is no free market competition in broadband Internet in America. There is no incentive for ISPs to compete on price or on service. We, as Americans, are a captive audience; our only choices are "use whatever ISP is available at our address" and "try to participate in twenty-first century America without Internet access".

We've already seen AT&T prioritizing its own traffic and Comcast banning protocols it didn't like. We need net neutrality protections to prevent predatory, monopolistic ISPs from engaging in that behavior. This is obvious to every American who's seen their monthly bill go up while the quality of service goes down.

But Chairman Pai has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't care what the American public has to say. If he did, he wouldn't even be considering repealing net neutrality.

I was wrong about Wheeler. He backed away from the fast-lane proposal, and passed Title II regulation. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than I ever thought we'd get.

I don't think I'm wrong about Pai. I'd love to be, but I think the fix is in. Pai doesn't give a fuck what the American public has to say.

But it's not about Pai. Pai won't last forever. Trump won't last forever. Even if the Republican majority in Congress sticks around, they're going to have to face their constituents sooner or later. And while net neutrality is a partisan issue on Capitol Hill, it's got broad bipartisan support everywhere else.

I don't think today's protests are going to make a damn bit of difference to Pai. But this is a long game. We need to keep the pressure on.

And hey, I've been surprised before. I thought SOPA and the TPP were foregone conclusions too. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised again.

Fanmail from Some Flounder

I've been meaning to blog more.

I like blogging. I like writing about shit. People seem to enjoy reading it. My friends keep telling me I should start blogging again (hi Friday!).

And I've been reading Nathan Rabin's Happy Place and really enjoying what Rabin has to say, and his enthusiasm about just being able to write about whatever he feels like.

But the kicker? Oh man.

The other day, I was checking replies to my Disqus posts.

And -- in response to a post I had written in the AV Club comments section five months ago, concerning the Black Panther: World of Wakanda comic -- some nice young fellow had written this:

Your blog sucks. Go back to sucking Ken Penders' dick.

Sonic the Hedgehog fandom is weird, you guys.

So okay, dude's obviously a troll; a quick gander at his posting history shows basically everything else he's ever written on Disqus has been arguing with atheists.

But the Penders thing? That's not random. It's far too specific.

My most recent Penders post was in 2015. At the time of this writing, it is on page 4 of this blog. So this is not a guy who decided, at random, to troll me, clicked on my name, and picked one of the posts on my blog to talk shit about.

And neither is this a guy who just now saw my Penders posts -- saw a link to them, found them on Google, whatever --, got incensed by them, and decided to write me a nastygram. Even assuming the gentlemen in question failed to notice the "Contact" link at the top of the page and instead, inexplicably, decided to look up my Disqus profile, he would have replied to one of my recent Disqus posts, not one that was five months old.

No. This is a dude who saw my posts about Ken Penders at some earlier date. Maybe as far back as 2013. And remembered them. And remembered my name. And, when he was randomly reading the comments section of an AV Club article, saw my name and felt the need to tell me off because, four years ago, I wrote some blog posts explaining that Ken Penders had a valid legal case against Archie Comics and Sega (or, as it's known in Sonic Fanboy-ese, "sucked Ken Penders' dick").

You know what? That is weirdly fucking flattering. I made an impact on this guy. People read my blog, and it matters to them.

I mean, sure, this guy is a troll and, clearly, a Sonic the Hedgehog fanboy -- those dudes are intense. I am sure he is not a representative member of my audience.

But the thing about writing whatever the hell I feel like is, I never know what's going to resonate with people.

The most attention I've ever gotten was when the online comic book press picked up on my posts about the never-finished-or-published 1990s Final Fantasy comic -- which, at that point, were already more than two years old.

And, in that same vein, my Final Fantasy 7 retrospective series continues to be popular. (Or at least did the last time I looked at my site stats. I've removed Google Analytics from this site -- that's a subject for another post -- but I'd like to get a new stats tool set up, because I like seeing what people are reading, where they're coming from, and what search terms they're using to get here.)

But these creators' rights pieces seem to get a pretty good amount of attention, too. People used to link my post on Marvel v Kirby all the time. And I once got a very nice E-Mail from Marc Tyler Nobleman for my Not My Batman post and its recognition of Bill Finger. (By the way: Batman & Bill is good; you should watch it.)

And so I'd like to get on back to yammering on about just whatever the hell it is I feel like yammering on about at the moment. Because what the hell; if I don't yammer here, I'm just going to yammer somewhere else, and frankly I spend far more time responding to trolls in the Techdirt comments section than a healthy person should.

I don't know if I'll manage 5-day-a-week posting like I used to. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. (Today I am posting on a Saturday. Whee!)

Course, if I do start blogging regularly again now, there's probably something to psychoanalyze in my doing it in response to our good friend Mr. "Your blog sucks" up there. I think humans are wired to notice criticism more than praise, and I suppose I'm no exception.

But what the hell; like I said, I've been planning to get back to blogging for awhile now anyway. And as criticism goes, I'm pretty sure this is the most fun hate mail I've ever gotten. Even better than the last unsolicited hate mail I got from a disgruntled Sonic fan, which was over 20 years ago and, in keeping with the whole "casual homophobia" theme, contained the phrase "You hump Robotnik's ugly butt!"

Sonic the Hedgehog fandom is weird, you guys.

Calandra Vargas Won't Stop Spamming Me

In 2006, I made a mistake.

I was working for a small company in north Phoenix. (That was not the mistake. ...Well, actually, it was, but not the one I'm here to talk about today.) And I represented that company in a networking group of local small businesses.

One of the people in the group was Sam Crump. I'm not used to using people's real names when I tell stories like this, but Sam's a public figure, so I'm going to go ahead and make an exception in this case.

Sam owns a law firm. I can't tell you anything about it from personal experience, but I hear good things.

And in 2006, Sam decided to run for the state legislature.

Sam's politics are not my politics; he would later describe himself as a "Tea Party Republican," though people weren't calling themselves that yet. I wouldn't have voted for him. But I liked him; he was a nice guy, and so when he asked us all to join his mailing list, I went ahead and wrote my E-Mail down.

Never put your E-Mail address on a political mailing list. Not for a politician you agree with, and certainly not for one whose views you find appalling. No matter how much you like him as a person.

Now, I don't know for sure that Sam or his people sold or gave away my E-Mail address to some group that collects E-Mail addresses for various fringe Republican candidates. It could be just a coincidence. But it's an E-Mail address I don't give out to a lot of people, it's the only E-Mail where I regularly get right-wing spam, and it just so happens that I started getting right-wing spam at that address after giving it to a local right-wing politician. Maybe whatever godforsaken list that address got put on got it from someplace else. But if I had to guess, I'd say they got it from Sam.

In the past, I've gotten spam for Arizona political candidates including Pamela Gorman and Joe Arpaio. But the latest politician who won't leave me the fuck alone is a woman named Calandra Vargas, who is running for Congress in Colorado Springs.

I have never set foot in the state of Colorado.

In fact, I've explained that to Ms. Vargas, or whoever's reading her inbox (if anybody), multiple times, in between clicking the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of her E-Mails.

The campaign's response to my first unsubscribe request, a few weeks ago, was to send me three more fucking E-Mails. When I got them, I clicked the Unsubscribe link again, and sent a reply letting Ms. Vargas, or whoever's reading her inbox (if anybody), know that if I received any more E-Mails from her campaign I would report her to the FCC for violating the CAN-SPAM Act.

I got another E-Mail from the Vargas campaign today.

Calandra Vargas is a politician, so she's probably not used to dealing with people who keep their promises. But I'm a man of my word, and I filed that complaint. And if I hear from her again, I'll file another one.

Here's the FCC's guide to reporting spam. If you're getting unsolicited E-Mails from politicians who won't let you unsubscribe from their lists, they're breaking the law.

AOMEI is a Spammer

From: Doris
Subject: AOMEI Freeware Review Invitation (corporate-sellout.com contact form)
06/11/2016 11:15 PM

Dear admin,

This is Doris from AOMEI Technology Ltd. I am writing for inviting you to evaluate our free backup and restore software - AOMEI Backupper Standard, the simplest free backup software. It has been upgraded to version 3.2 now, supporting Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, and XP.

As a freeware, our Backupper has many advantages which most of other free backup software lack, such as incremental backup, differential backup, schedule automatic backup, create bootable media, PXE boot tool, dissimilar hardware restore and file synchronization etc.
Download Link: [direct link to an executable file]
Learn more: [some generically-named website]

Could you please spare your precious time to test and review our freeware? Or could you please take a look at that and pass on your comments to me, any of your suggestion will be much appreciated.

I am eagerly looking forward to your reply.

From: Thad Boyd
Subject: Re: AOMEI Freeware Review Invitation (corporate-sellout.com contact form)
06/13/2016 10:01 PM

What's that, Doris? You want to know if I'd be interested in writing up a nice blog post about how AOMEI Technology Ltd. is a dodgy company that advertises its products by spamming people's contact forms? Why, I would LOVE to!

Cox Claims to Be Unable to Revoke a DHCP Lease

I've always advocated being kind to tech support people. They have a tough job, it's not their fault you have a problem, and they spend all day dealing with abuse from people who act like it is their fault.

Well, yesterday, for the first time in my life, I cursed out a phone support rep. I'm not proud of it, but in my defense, I'd been talking to support for 90 minutes by that point, and the last 30 of that had been a conversation where this tier-2 rep talked in circles, blamed me for problems with their server, repeatedly said she couldn't help me, refused to listen to my explanations of the problem, and acted like a condescending ass.

Seriously, this is the worst tech support experience I have ever had. Beating out the previous record-holder, the guy who told me that my burned-out power supply wasn't really burned-out, I was probably experiencing a software issue. After I told him there were burn marks on the power connector.

At least that one was funny. The conversation I had with Cox yesterday wasn't funny, just infuriating.

Here's what happened: on Monday evening, when I tried to send an E-Mail, I started getting this error:

An error occurred while sending mail: The mail server sent an incorrect greeting:
fed1rmimpo306.cox.net cox connection refused from [my IP address].

I tried unplugging the modem to see if I'd get a new IP assigned. No luck. I tried turning the computer off and then on again. No luck. I tried sending mail from other devices. Same result.

So on Tuesday afternoon, I pulled up Cox's live support chat to ask for some help.

The rep eventually told me he'd escalate, and that the issue should be fixed within 24 hours.

Just shy of 27 hours later, I pulled up Cox's live support chat again, to ask what the problem was.

The rep -- a different one this time -- quoted me this feedback from the ticket:

Good afternoon, the log below shows the username can send on our servers. This may be a software, device or network issue. Please review the notes and contact the customer.

In other words, they'd tested the wrong thing. The mail server was rejecting my connection, based on my IP address, before my mail client sent my username and password. And Cox's solution to this was...to confirm that my username and password were working.

I explained this to the rep, over the course of 75 excruciating minutes. I demonstrated by disconnecting my phone from my wifi network and sending an E-Mail while connected to my wireless carrier. It worked when I connected to Cox's SMTP server over LTE; the same mail app on the same phone failed when connected to my wifi.

I explained that the mail server was blocking connections from my IP address, and that they needed to either make it stop blocking my IP address or assign me a different IP address.

The rep told me that was impossible, that residential accounts use DHCP, which assigns IP addresses at random.

I told him that I know what DHCP is, and that I wasn't asking for a static IP address, I was just asking for someone to revoke my DHCP lease and assign my modem a new IP address from the DHCP pool.

He told me that the only way to get a new IP address is to disconnect your modem for 24 hours.

I told him that was unacceptable, and I asked if there was anyone else I could talk to.

He gave me a number to call.

The person who answered the phone said she'd escalate to a tier-2 tech. I said, pointedly, that I did not understand why nobody had thought to do that in the preceding 75 minutes.

As it turns out, tier-2 techs are worse than tier-1 techs. Tier-1 techs at least know that they don't know everything, and are willing to ask for help from people who know more than they do. Tier-2 techs think they do know everything, will not ask for help from someone who knows more than they do, and certainly will not listen to a customer who knows more than they do.

Well, probably not all of them. But that was sure as hell my experience with the tier-2 tech I got stuck with.

First, she had the sheer gall to tell me my modem wasn't connected to the Internet.

I told her I could connect to websites, I could receive E-Mail, and that the error message on sending mail was not a timeout, it was a Connection Refused. I added that I was doing this from a computer that was connected to my router by a cable, that I had not accidentally jumped on somebody else's wifi.

She would have none of it. She insisted "We can't see your connection here, so you're not connected." Repeatedly. When I told her that I was clearly connected to the Internet, she just kept telling me that no, I wasn't.

Finally she told me to bypass my router and plug my desktop directly into my modem. I told her that this wouldn't fix anything, because this was happening from multiple devices that all had Internet access. She got huffy and standoffish and told me she couldn't help me if I wasn't willing to do what she asked.

So I did it. I climbed back behind my computer, traced the cable to the router, and swapped it with the one coming from the modem.

Absolutely nothing changed. Except that she said. "Oh. You're running a Linux computer? We don't support Linux."

I responded, "The operating system I am using is not relevant to whether your server is accepting connections from my IP address."

But some reps aren't interested in helping. They're only interested in finding an excuse for why they don't have to help you.

I asked her if there was any way she could determine why my IP was being blocked. I noted that it seemed to be on some sort of blacklist.

She asked if I'd checked whether it was on any public blacklist. I responded that I had, and that it had an expired listing on SORBS from 2013 -- well before it was my IP address; I've only lived in this house since 2014 --, that I hadn't found it in any other blacklist, and that a SORBS listing from over two years ago should not result in my suddenly losing the ability to connect to SMTP two days ago.

She said that if I was on a blacklist, those were handled by third parties and it was my responsibility to get de-listed. I explained that I did not see my IP on any currently-active blacklists, and asked if she could look up what was causing the rejection. She said she couldn't.

I asked if she could reset my IP. She said that the only way to do it would be to shut down my modem for 25 hours. (Already I had somehow lost another hour!)

I told her that was unacceptable, and asked how I could get it reset remotely.

She told me that was impossible, that residential accounts use DHCP, which assigns IP addresses at random, and that the only way to get a new DHCP address is to disconnect your modem for 25 hours.

I told her that it is not impossible, that the same router that provides DHCP leases is capable of revoking them, and that I needed somebody to do that for me.

We went round and round like this for awhile.

At one point, she said, "We can't do that; it's done automatically."

I responded that anything a computer does automatically can also be done manually, and that there is certainly someone in Cox who has the account access to log into the router that is assigning IP addresses and revoke a lease.

She started to explain DHCP to me again -- it was about the fifth time at this point -- and I snapped.

I shouted, "I know how DHCP works; I ran an ISP, for fuck's sake!"

I feel kinda bad about that.

I finally got pushed over to a supervisor -- another twenty minutes on hold -- who tried to tell me that Cox can't help me because they don't support third-party programs like what I'm using, and that if I could send messages from webmail, that's what I should do.

I said, "Are you seriously telling me that Cox does not support sending E-Mail from phones or tablets?"

The supervisor backed off that claim and said that she didn't really understand the technical stuff, that she could send me back to tier 2.

I responded that it had been two hours and I didn't think it was in anyone's best interest for me to continue this conversation, but that if I decided to call back tomorrow, what could I do to get some service?

She said to ask for tier 2 again, and this time ask for a manager.

I'm debating whether I really want to deal with that kind of aggravation, or if I'd be happier just abandoning the Cox E-Mail address that I've been using for fifteen fucking years.

Incidentally, Cox just jacked its prices up by $7 a month. Why is it that every time the cost goes up, the quality of service goes down? I remember the first time they hiked my bill, they dropped Usenet service.

That was in 2009. Since then my bill's gone up $27. My service sucks; several times a day my connection just stops working and I have to restart the modem.

And of course I can't switch to another ISP, because there isn't one available at my address. My "choices", such as they are, are as follows:

  • Pay $74 a month for Cox
  • Steal wifi from a neighbor who's paying for Cox
  • See how far I can get using only my phone's data plan for Internet access

I'm pretty much fucked, like most Americans are on broadband access.

And the hell of it is, even if there were another provider available, all the alternatives seem to be even worse.

I mean, Christ, at least I don't have Time Warner or Comcast.

E-Mails and Passwords

So the other day I decided it was past time to reset all my passwords.

I'm pretty good about password hygiene. I've been using a password locker for years, with a unique, randomly-generated* password for every account I use. But I'll admit that, like most of us, I don't do as good a job of password rotation as I might. That's probably because I've managed to amass over 150 different accounts across different sites, and resetting 150 different passwords is a giant pain in the ass.

(I'm thinking that, from here on in, I should pick a subset of passwords to reset every month, so I never wind up having to reset all 150 at once again. It would also help me to clear out the cruft and not keep logins for sites that no longer exist, or which I'm never going to use again, or where I can't even find the damn login page anymore.)

There was one more reason I decided now was a good time to do a mass update: I've got two E-Mail addresses that have turned into spam holes. As I've mentioned previously, I'm currently looking for work and getting inundated with job spam; unfortunately I went and put my primary E-Mail address at the top of my resume, which in hindsight was a mistake. Never post your personal E-Mail in any public place; always use a throwaway.

Which I do, most of the time -- and that's created a second problem: I've been signing up for websites with the same E-Mail address for 15 years, and also used to use it in my whois information. (I've since switched to dedicated E-Mail addresses that I use only for domain registration.) So now, that E-Mail has turned into a huge spam hole; it's currently got over 500 messages in its Junk folder, and that's with a filter that deletes anything that's been in there longer than a week. My spam filters are well-trained, but unfortunately they only run on the client side, not the server side, so any time Thunderbird isn't running on my desktop, my spam doesn't get filtered. (If I'm out of the house, I can tell if the network's gone down, because I start getting a bunch of spam in my inbox on my phone.)

So now I've gone and created two new E-Mail addresses: one that's just for E-Mails about jobs, and another as my new all-purpose signing-up-for-things address.

My hope is that the companies hammering my primary E-Mail address with job notifications will eventually switch to the new, jobs-only E-Mail address, and I'll get my personal E-Mail address back to normal. And that I can quit using the Spam Hole address entirely and switch all my accounts over to the new address. Which hopefully shouldn't get as spam-filled as the old one since I haven't published it in a publicly-accessible place like whois.

Anyway, some things to take into account with E-Mail and passwords:

  • Don't use your personal E-Mail address for anything but personal communication. Don't give it to anyone you don't know.
  • Keep at least one secondary E-Mail address that you can abandon if it gets compromised or filled up with spam. It's not necessarily a bad idea to have several -- in my case, I've got one for accounts at various sites, several that I use as contacts for web domains, and one that's just for communication about jobs.
  • Use a password locker. 1Password, Keepass, and Lastpass are all pretty highly-regarded, but they're just three of the many available options.
  • Remember all the different devices you'll be using these passwords on.
    • I'm using a Linux desktop, an OSX desktop, a Windows desktop, and an Android phone; that means I need to pick a password locker that will run on all those different OS's.
    • And have some way of keeping the data synced across them.
    • And don't forget that, even with a password locker, chances are that at some point you'll end up having to type some of these passwords manually, on a screen keyboard. Adding brackets and carets and other symbols to your password will make it more secure, but you're going to want to weigh that against the hassle of having to dive three levels deep into your screen keyboard just to type those symbols. It may be worth it if it's the password for, say, your bank account, but it's definitely not worth it for your Gmail login.
  • Of course, you need a master password to access all those other passwords, and you should choose a good one. There's no point in picking a bunch of unique, strong passwords if you protect them with a shitty unsecure password. There are ways to come up with a password that's secure but easy to remember:
    • The "correct horse battery staple" method of creating a passphrase of four random words is a good one, but there are caveats:
      • You have to make sure they're actually random words, words that don't have anything to do with each other. Edward Snowden's example, "MargaretThatcheris110%SEXY.", is not actually very secure; it follows correct English sentence structure, "MargaretThatcher" and "110%" are each effectively one word since they're commonly-used phrases, the word "SEXY" is common as fuck in passwords, and mixed case and punctuation don't really make your password significantly more secure if, for example, you capitalize the beginnings of words or entire words and end sentences with periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Basically, if you pick the words in your passphrase yourself, they're not random enough; use a computer to pick the words for you.
      • And this method unfortunately doesn't work very well on a screen keyboard. Unless you know of a screen keyboard that autocompletes words inside a password prompt but won't remember those words or their sequence. I think this would be a very good idea for screen keyboards to implement, but I don't know of any that do it.
    • There are programs and sites that generate pronounceable passwords -- something like "ahx2Boh8" or "ireeQuaico". Sequences of letters (and possibly numbers) that are gibberish but can be pronounced, which makes them easy to remember -- a little less secure than a password that doesn't follow such a rule, but a lot more secure than a dictionary word. But read reviews before you use one of these services -- you want to make sure that the passwords it generates are sufficiently random to be secure, and that it's reputable and can be trusted not to snoop on you and send that master password off to some third party. It's best to pick one that generates multiple passwords at once; if you pick one from a list it's harder for a third party to know which one you chose.
  • Of course, any password is memorable if you type it enough times.
  • And no password is going to protect you from a targeted attack by a sufficiently dedicated and resourceful attacker -- if somebody's after something you've got, he can probably find somebody in tech support for your ISP, or your registrar, or your hosting provider, or your phone company, or some company you've bought something from, somewhere, who can be tricked into giving him access to your account. Or maybe he'll exploit a zero-day vulnerability. Or maybe one of the sites you've got an account with will be compromised and they'll get everybody's account information. Password security isn't about protecting yourself against a targeted attack. It's about making yourself a bigger hassle to go after than the guy sitting next to you, like the old joke about "I don't have to outrun the tiger, I just have to outrun you." And it's about minimizing the amount of damage somebody can do if he does compromise one of your accounts.
  • And speaking of social engineering, security questions are deliberate vulnerabilities, and they are bullshit. Never answer a security question truthfully. If security questions are optional, do not fill them out. If they are not optional and a site forces you to add a security question, your best bet is to generate a pseudorandom answer (remember you may have to read it over the phone, so a pronounceable password or "correct horse battery staple"-style phrase would be a good idea here, though you could always just use letters and numbers too -- knowing the phonetic alphabet helps) and store it in your password locker alongside your username and password.
  • You know what else is stupid? Password strength indicators. I once used one (it was Plesk's) that rejected K"Nb\:uO`) as weak but accepted P@55w0rd as strong. You can generally ignore password strength indicators, unless they reject your password outright and make you come up with a new one.

* For the purposes of this discussion, I will be using the words "random" and "pseudorandom" interchangeably, because the difference between the two things is beyond the scope of this post.

On Advertisements

Dear DC,

Here is a list of DC Comics I would have purchased today if they had not contained obnoxious half-page Twix ads:

  • Batman Beyond #1
  • Bat-Mite #1
  • Bizarro #1

Here is a list of DC comics I purchased today:

DC, I do not have a fancy marketing degree. However, I can offer you a marketing suggestion for free: if one team of marketers suggests making money by releasing new comics that appeal to a different audience from the core DC line (albeit, granted, still pretty much just made up of spinoffs of Batman and Superman comics), and another team of marketers suggests making money through finding a really irritating and distracting way of putting advertisements in your comics, perhaps you might consider rolling out those two ideas separately instead of simultaneously. This is what is known as "isolating the variables".

I would also suggest that, if I were one of the writers, artists, editors, or marketers who had gone to considerable effort to create and market a new and different comic book to a nontraditional audience, I would be pretty unhappy right now with the people in management who had made a decision that actively sabotaged the appeal of that comic book.

I do not wish to be negative or ungrateful here. I greatly appreciate your decision to convince me to keep the nine dollars I would have spent on those three comic books. I went nextdoor and spent that money on beer instead. I had a Four Peaks Kiltlifter and a New Belgium Slow Ride. They were very good beers, and at no point in my drinking experience did they interrupt me and try to convince me to buy Twix.

Kisses,

Thad

Job Spammers are the Worst

I'm looking for work right now.

So I've got a current resume posted publicly up on CareerBuilder.

And oh God, the spam that brings.

It's kind of amazing how many hiring agencies seem to have taken a look at the scammers who sell penis pills and decided, "Yeah, that looks like a pretty good business strategy."

I'm inundated, every day, with postings for jobs that aren't even in my state. I've gotten ten of them this week alone (and one phone call), and it's only Wednesday morning.

Most of them seem to be coming through one single distributor, or at least one single software kit -- because they follow the same format, and if you click Unsubscribe, all the Unsubscribe pages look exactly the same except for the logo.

Needless to say, they do not actually honor the unsubscribe requests. These are spammers we're talking about.

Of course, the big problem here is that unlike the spambots selling Cialis, I can't just mark these as spam and rely on Bayesian filters to sort the wheat from the chaff -- because aside from the location, these postings are indistinguishable from real job posting E-Mails, of the sort I want and need, because I am trying to find a job. Job spammers have an in that other spammers don't: they're advertising something I actually want, they're just advertising it in a place I don't want it. So I can't filter out an entire class of E-Mails, because the risk of false positives is far too high.

Which leaves me relying on filtering by domain name. Which, as anybody knows, is unreliable Stone Age Whac-a-Mole shit, because spammers use all the domain names they can get their mitts on.

Still, it's better than nothing, and I'll be putting a list of the spam domains I've filtered so far at the end of this post -- maybe it'll be of some help to some other folks out there looking for work. And maybe it'll give these agencies a little bad publicity.

But first, here's a story about the absolute worst, slimiest job spam I've gotten to date.

It's from an organization called Strategic Staffing Solutions, which started out by straight-up brazenly lying to me. Here's a portion of the E-Mail I got, with the rep's last name and E-Mail redacted -- I don't want to rain down Internet mob justice on anybody, even if they are engaging in sleazy tactics; I just want to name and shame the company that encourages this type of behavior.

From: Adam [redacted] <[redacted]@strategicstaff.com>
Subject: data scientist - MO
01/26/2015 02:17 PM

Hello Thad Boyd,

Please contact me as I have many job opportunities to discuss.

We have 24 locations within the USA.

I have called your phone number about your resume. The phone number has been disconnected.

Would you be interested in this job position? Please send me your resume.

Here are two job orders:

What followed were two job listings that have absolutely nothing to do with my education, training, or job experience.

So, straight into the circular file it went.

And then I thought, you know what? No. That line about trying to call me and my phone being disconnected was low. That's just a gross way to start any kind of relationship.

So I replied to the guy, and decided to press him on the "Your phone has been disconnected" lie.

From: Thad Boyd <[redacted]>
Subject: Re: data scientist - MO
01/27/2015 08:45 AM

Hi Adam,

I've had the same phone number for ten years, and haven't had any trouble receiving calls that I'm aware of. What number were you trying to call, and where did you get it?

He, of course, completely ignored my question, and responded with this boilerplate:

From: Adam [redacted] <[redacted]@strategicstaff.com>
Subject: Re: data scientist - MO
01/27/2015 09:55 AM

Hello Thad,

Please send me your resume.
Are you actively seeking work?

Please make use of Central Sourcing@STRATEGIC, as they can accelerate your recruiting.

I decided to press the issue one more time:

From: Thad Boyd <[redacted]>
Subject: Re: data scientist - MO
01/29/2015 09:52 AM

Hi Adam,

Yes, I'm actively seeking work.

Where did you say you got my contact details, and what phone number were you trying to call? I'd like to know if there's something wrong with my phone service. My grandfather is in the hospital right now and I need to know that people can reach me.

(And since he pretended not to notice my question about the phone, I pretended not to notice he'd asked for my resume.)

That last part is true, by the way -- Grandpa's going to be okay but he is currently in the hospital. I brought this up to make a point: lying to somebody about his phone being disconnected has consequences. If I had been gullible enough to believe his lie, I could have wound up wasting a good chunk of my day on the phone with Sprint, trying to figure out what was wrong with my phone service, and worrying all the time that I was missing important calls about a family member's health.

Lying to somebody like that -- what the hell is even the point? You think you're going to build a rapport with me by starting our relationship off by lying to me? Specifically, lying about something that could cause me a considerable amount of stress if I believed you? And how long do you think you can keep somebody believing the lie when you clearly have never even looked at his resume?

Does this actually work often enough to keep Strategic Staffing Solutions in business?

I sent that E-Mail out on the 29th. It's been four business days and I think it's a pretty safe bet that Adam's not going to be getting back to me. Not so much as a "Look, I'm sorry, they make us say that, there's no problem with your phone and I hope your grandpa gets better; is there any way I can still help you?" When faced with the potential consequences of his lie, he didn't take the thirty seconds it would have taken to come clean and apologize to me. He just chalked me up as a loss and moved on to the next sucker.

So I'm pretty comfortable in saying fuck Strategic Staffing Solutions, fuck their sleazy, dishonest recruitment tactics, and fuck the horse they rode in on. If you do business with Strategic Staffing Solutions, know that you are doing business with spammers and liars -- and that if they were so cavalier about lying to me, they're probably going to be more than happy to lie to you too.

Finally, here's a list of domains that have sent me job spam, and I'll probably add to it as time goes on. Please feel free to add them to your own spam filters. And hey, if this creates some negative word association for these domains on Google, I'd be pretty okay with that.

  • strategicstaff.com
  • enterprisesolutioninc.com
  • net2source.com
  • colcon.com
  • pyramidci.com
  • ittblazers.com
  • artechinfo.com
  • usgrpinc.com
  • diverselynx.com
  • axelon.com
  • h3-technologies.com
  • mondo.com
  • simplion.com
  • genuent.net
  • abacusservice.com
  • compnova.com
  • spectraforce.com
  • syscomtechinc.com
  • iit-inc.com
  • eteaminc.com
  • project1.com
  • globalsyst.com
  • ustsmail.com
  • ustechsolutionsinc.com
  • rconnectllc.com
  • lorventech.com
  • talentburst.com
  • softpath.net
  • waddellcareers.com
  • first-tek.com
  • quantitativesystems.com
  • advantageresourcing.com
  • gtt-it.com
  • mamsys.com
  • enterprise-logic.com
  • diversant.com
  • fortek.com
  • stemxpert.com
  • panzersolutions.com
  • opensystemstech.com
  • itstaffinc.com
  • princetoninformation.com
  • rjtcompuquest.com
  • greenlightstaff.com
  • judge.com
  • techdigitalcorp.com
  • ttiofusa.com

Try Them and You May, I Say

Dear Senator Cruz,

I enjoyed your courageous Senate speech on the importance of Senator Ted Cruz. I was particularly interested in the part where you read Green Eggs and Ham, and stated that it was analogous to the healthcare debate, saying Americans "did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse."

Senator, I have two questions.

The first is, is your copy of Green Eggs and Ham missing the last few pages, or did you legitimately miss the point of a book that is easily understood by a typical four-year-old?

And, as a followup: do you next intend to quote 1984 in support of the NSA's domestic surveillance program, or are you more interested in citing Soylent Green as a great agribusiness innovation that will create jobs and feed the hungry?

Customer Service Survey

I have no complaints about the representative who I spoke with; he was great. He was knowledgeable, professional, and responsive, and told me that they were aware of the outage and working on it.

HOWEVER, I have some pretty serious complaints about Cox's level of service.

First of all, my Internet outage lasted for over 12 hours.

Second, when I called, there was no recorded message informing me that there was a known outage in my area; I had to wait on hold for an extended period of time just to be told something that could have been handled by a recording as soon as I called in.

And speaking of recordings: you're seriously going to make me listen to the same four commercials, over and over again, on a continuous loop? Hey, kudos for finding a way to make being on hold an even MORE unpleasant experience; I didn't think that was actually possible. But I have to wonder, does Cox hate its employees AND its customers? Because this is just about the best way I've ever seen to ensure that a customer is as angry and frustrated as humanly possible before getting to speak to a support tech.

Put bluntly: Cox's Internet service is poor, rates keep increasing even as services are dropped (thanks so much for discontinuing Usenet support and then jacking up my rates five bucks), and saying that calling technical support is like pulling teeth is an insult to dentists everywhere.

Continuing bluntly: the only reason Cox has managed to keep my business is by virtue of being a local monopoly. The only other option for broadband Internet at my address is CenturyLink at 3.0Mbps, which is even more unacceptable than Cox's poor service, frequent outages, high prices, and legitimately terrible hold experience.

And, what's more, I strongly believe that Cox knows this, that the company is well aware that it has a captive audience and can therefore charge high rates for poor service and there is nothing else its customers can do but sit here and take it, because the broadband market has no competition to speak of.

In the short term, I begrudgingly admit that Cox has my business simply by default, because I have nowhere else to go.

In the long term, the market is going to change, competition is going to increase, and all the customers like myself who have spent the past decade being grossly dissatisfied with Cox's service are going to jump ship at the very first opportunity. A hard rain is going to fall.

I strongly suggest that Cox study the lessons of companies like Microsoft -- or, more dramatically, Blockbuster Video. Both of these are examples of companies that had a virtual monopoly in their respective industries. This monoculture allowed them to become bloated and unresponsive, and keep collecting money from their captive customers -- because where else were they going to go?

It didn't last. Technology changed. The markets changed. Blockbuster went bankrupt and, while Microsoft has held on to its majority share in the desktop/laptop OS and office suite markets, it has utterly failed to gain a foothold in emerging markets like phones and tablets, its browser market share has plummeted, and even companies that are using the latest version of Microsoft Office are likelier to use Google Docs for online collaboration.

Did this happen because Blockbuster didn't offer comparable, competetive services to Netflix and Redbox? Did it happen because Windows Phone is a poor operating system, or because Internet Explorer is an inferior browser?

No. Blockbuster offered very competetive prices to Netflix (no, it didn't offer streaming, but Blockbuster went bankrupt before streaming became Netflix's dominant distribution model). Windows Phone has received positive reviews, and Internet Explorer now performs comparably to other standards-compliant browsers.

So why did customers eagerly drop Blockbuster and Microsoft the first chance a viable alternative appeared?

Because that's what happens when you spend a decade taking your customers for granted, charging them a ridiculous rate for a barely-functional product or service, and generally treating them like livestock.

Yes, Blockbuster and Microsoft improved the quality of their products and services once competition started to pressure them into doing it. By then it was too late.

I know Cox is a monopoly in my area. I know there's no short-term incentive for it to improve its service or decrease its cost, because it doesn't have to in order to keep my business.

But if I were running Cox, I would think long and hard about the future. Someday, you ARE going to have a viable competitor. If you want to keep your existing customers' business when that day comes, you should probably start treating them better, right now.

The first thing you should do is stop making your customers listen to commercials when they're on hold.