Author Archives: David

Poor Customer Service

Once again I’m experiencing some very poor customer service … and, at least in one case, it really surprises me that I’m experiencing it.

So there are two major issues I’m experiencing …

  • A major internet provider email service. My newly spun up Amazon LIghtsail instance is unable to deliver mail to their customers.
  • A relatively small fitness device manufacturer isn’t providing timely support for their product.

The first issue is with the major internet provider (who shall remain nameless, but the company name is often abbreviated to three letters.

I’m in the process of moving my mailing list server to an Amazon LIghtsail instance … but when I send mail to this ISP’s servers, it gets rejected with an error that indicates an email to contact.

About a month ago I encountered the error while testing and send a message to the address indicated. A week after my contact they responded saying that the block had been removed.

Unfortunately, in some final testing before my planned migration (this coming weekend), I encountered the error again.

I thought it has been resolved, but apparently I was wrong.

The big issue is that it takes them a week to respond. So there’s very little chance of the issue getting resolved before this weekend. As a result, I have to postpone the migration. I would not be surprised if it takes more than a month to resolve the issue.

To be honest, I’m quite used to this kind of response from a major internet provider … they probably get slammed with this kind of request. Plus, I suspect, they really don’t care about small business that want to send mail to their customers.

The other issue is with a relatively small engineering company that makes a device that gates ANT+ signals to Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE).

I purchased the device to make it easier to use Zwift with my Apple TV.

From the moment I got the device I’ve had problems. Their web site has no ‘support’ contact information. I tried filling out their ‘contact us’ page but got no reply. Finally I sent a message to the email address listed on their domain’s whois information and got a reply indicating they forwarded my message to someone else.

My first attempt to contact them was December 8th.

A few days later I got a response indicating they were aware of the problem and were working on a fix to their configuration app. They also asked if I would be interested in a replacement device to see if that fixed the problem. I responded that I would like to try a replacement and provided a shipping address. This response was sent on December 13th.

I finally got a response today indicating that they would like to get the device back for analysis and asking where I purchased it and the order number. I provided the requested information and they informed me that I would have to go back to the purchase place to get an exchange.

Sigh … more delays.

In the case of the internet provider, I’ve come to expect that level of customer service. In the cast of the engineering company, I’m quite surprised. They should be much more responsive to customer issues. Especially since they are catering to a niche market.

OK, today’s rant is over.


Lazy Blog Spammer

Here we have an example of a very lazy blog spammer.

At least put some effort into it … if you’re going to the effort of spamming blogs, at least fill in the substitution variables.

Sheesh

Garmin Edge 1030

OK, I’m going to try something new.

As you are probably aware, I’m an avid cyclist.  I really like cycling.  Some may say it’s an addiction (albeit on the healthy side).

Standard disclaimer:

Being into technology, I’ve accumulated a fair bit of bike tech also.  As such, I’m going to try doing thumbnail reviews of some of the bike tech that I current, or used to, use.

These aren’t going to be super technical reviews.  For that kind of thing I suggest you head over to DCRainmaker‘s blog or GPLama‘s YouTube channel.

These are going to be my impressions of the product … what I like, what I don’t like, what could be better, and some things that should be left just the way they are.

All the items I’m going to review have been purchased outright by me and I don’t get any compensation for the reviews (unless I provide an Amazon link, in which case I get a small commission).

Continue reading →

Protecting domains from spammers

Spammers quite often ‘spoof’, or fake, the from address of an email.

As a result of this, many unsuspecting domain owners are being ‘blamed’ for spam that appears to come from their domain.

Fortunately, there is a relatively easy way to protect your domain from this: Publish DMARC policies.

If you are publishing SPF records and signing your email with DKIM, you can publish DMARC policies that tell receiving mail servers what do with emails that don’t align with the SPF and DKIM information.

SPF policies are DNS records that indicate what mail servers your mail is sent from.

DKIM is a way to add digital signatures to your email so that receiving mail servers can verify it was sent from an authorized source and that it wasn’t modified in transit.

Now what if you have a domain that you NEVER send email from?

Protecting those domains from being used in spam is even easier.

Continue reading →

LetsEncrypt, Certbot, and Lightsail

Although not directly supported, it’s quite possible to use the LetsEncrypt certbot client on Amazon Lightsail Linux.

First of all … what is LetsEncrypt?

Let’s Encrypt is a free service that offers basic SSL certificates any web site.  The certificates are good for 90 days but can be renewed indefinitely. With the proper software, the installation & renewal of the certificates can be fully automated.

There are a few things to be aware of and workarounds that need to be done.

First, download the certbot-auto client itself…

Continue reading →

Amazon Lightsail


Ha! I’ll be you thought this blog was dead.

Well, truth be told, it was pretty close … but you never know when inspiration will strike.

So a little while ago I had a hardware failure on one my servers. This incident has given me the incentive to try and move some of the servers I host to other machines … where I don’t have to worry about the hardware end of things.

To that end, I started looking at hosting providers.  One of the providers I’m looking at is Amazon Lightsail.

Amazon Lightsail provides micro instances of their AWS compute service at very good prices.

A 512mb / 20gb Linux instance only costs $5 / month and the first month is free.

So I’ve been playing around with that and like it a lot.

I’ve currently got a handful of sites moved over to Lightsail.

I have encountered a few gotcha’s though …

Continue reading →

Confirming cancel in a ProgressMonitorDialog

I’m working on a routine that downloads content from a host to the users desktop.

As the content is being downloaded, a progress dialog is displayed (implemented as ProgressMonitorDialog).

In the progress monitor, the cancel button is enabled.

In the default implementation, if the cancel button is pressed on the ProgressMonitorDialog, the cancel button is disabled.

I wanted to be able to ask the user if they really want to cancel the operation. If they don’t, then continue on with the operation. If they do, then perform the cancellation as usual.

I couldn’t find a straight forward way to implement this with the default operation, so I came up with my own solution…

Continue reading →

Mailbait Threats

Back in October of 2012 I devised a way of blocking abuse of my mailing list server by detecting mailbait abusers (mailbait.info offers a ‘service’ to fill your, or someone else, mailbox with unwanted mailing list subscriptions). In June of 2013 I refined the technique.

Basically I detected if someone was visiting the mailing list subscribe page from mailbait.info and sent them to a special page that also annoyed them by popping up hundreds of javascript alerts about not spamming people.

Regardless of the popups, people still try to use mailbait to involuntarily subscribe people to my lists (well, try at least, my lists require a closed loop confirmation system).

Today I received the following threat from a mailbait.info user ..

threat.

I’m inclined to ignore the ‘warning’ … but I find it somewhat satisfying that my approach has annoyed someone sufficiently.

As an added measure, I’ve updated my system security mechanism to block any IP that attempts to use the mailbait service more than once.