Jean Egan » Reference http://jeanegan.com On-time, under budget and unpretentious. Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:01:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Dealing with Spammers http://jeanegan.com/2009/08/12/spam/ http://jeanegan.com/2009/08/12/spam/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:48:40 +0000 Jean http://jeanegan.com/?p=757 I recently received a lot of what is called “Backscatter” spam email messages. These types of spam messages are different than regular spam in that the messages I received were from the “Mail Delivery System” and “Mail Delivery Subsystem”. (MDS) They were notices that emails that “I” tried to send didn’t get sent. I emphasise the word “I” because, well.. because I didn’t send them.

Here’s what happened, a spammer decided to use my domain name for a return email address on their messages that they sent. When the messages were sent to email addresses or domains that did not exist, the receiving server sends a report to my server that the message was not sent, for whatever reason and composes a MDS email. These messages make it back to my mailbox, as though I were the person sending these horrible emails.

So I set to work on seeing what could be done to stop this abhorrant abuse. Here’s what I’ve come up with. SPF – Sender Policy Framework. Basically, it’s dependent upon the receiver’s server to come to my server and check to see if it’s coming from me, really. If the receiver’s mail server doesn’t check for a SPF record, the spam will be sent through.

Previously, my SPF TXT record looked like this:

“v=spf1 a mx ?all”

I changed it to look like this (where myISPhost.com = my particular ISP host, because I use my host’s SMTP server to send mail:

“v=spf1 a mx include:myISPhost.com ~all”

The change from a ? to a ~ basically says, ONLY accept messages coming directly from my mail server, OR from my internet service provider, and nowhere else.

When I go on vacation, I’ll need to hook up directly to my webmail to send messages, because if the ISP is not the one I have specified, the message WILL NOT be sent because I normally use the SMTP server of my ISP in my email program.

Unfortunately, this will not decrease the amount of backscatter because it will still send me failed reports, but by setting the SPF record this way, it will make my server less desirable to spammers, because of the higher fail rate.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

If I am hosting your site, and you wish for me to update your SPF record, please feel free to contact me. Let me know if you are sending email from your domain but use the SMTP of your ISP, (See the “Sending mail” preference of your email account) and I will update your DNS entry to make your server less desirable to spammers as well.

If you have found this page and I’m not hosting your domain and you would like to set up your SPF text record in your DNS records, and have access to WHM (WebHost Manager) you can update this record by going to “Edit DNS zone” and either editing what is there, or adding a TXT line, similar to the one above. If you need help creating this line, openspf.org has a setup wizard that can automatically generate your code there. I understand you can do it through SSH as well, but I don’t know how to do that. If you don’t know where to start to edit your DNS zone, contact your web hosting company. They should be able to help you.

Good luck!

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]]> http://jeanegan.com/2009/08/12/spam/feed/ 0 Einstein Thoughts http://jeanegan.com/2008/05/08/einstein-thought/ http://jeanegan.com/2008/05/08/einstein-thought/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 19:54:17 +0000 Jean http://jeanegan.com/?p=179 I have been learning more about Einstein and will share thoughts that I find to be profound. (Mostly so I don’t forget them!) I hope that you enjoy them as much as I am. It is amazing the difference one person can make to this world.

If anyone understood the propagation of sound waves, it was Einstein. When asked the question “What is the speed of sound?” from the “Edison test”. Einstein admitted that he “did not carry such information in my mind, since it is readily available in books“.

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think.”

So refreshing to hear this from someone so intelligent!

I am not sure of the spelling of this person’s name, but when Einstein worked for the Swiss Patent Office, his boss, Fredrick Holler (sp?) had this credo which was as useful for a creative and rebellious theorist as it was for a patent examiner:

“You have to remain critically vigilant. Question every premise. Challenge conventional wisdom and never accept the truth of something merely because everyone else views it as obvious. Resist being credulous.”

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]]> http://jeanegan.com/2008/05/08/einstein-thought/feed/ 1 Helpful Job Search Sites http://jeanegan.com/2008/03/31/helpful-job-search-sites/ http://jeanegan.com/2008/03/31/helpful-job-search-sites/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:18:51 +0000 Jean http://jeanegan.com/2008/03/31/helpful-job-search-sites/ I’ve shared this list on my website before, and think that it is helpful enough to serve up again. This list has helped friends and colleagues to find their new wonderful jobs.

The links will open up in new browser windows. Feel free to email me any job search sites you’ve found to be helpful that I don’t have listed. I’d love to keep the list active. Let me know if you find a broken link along the way. I’ll try to keep it current and helpful :)

Great sites:

Freelance work in particular

Still good sites, but they tend to not have stuff in my area:

  • awn.com
    (animation world network – wow, they have improved their search function. Also more positions are showing up in CT, and don’t be fooled, it’s not just animation jobs that are posted there, also graphic design, so check ‘em out!)
  • Creative Hotlist
  • hotjobs.com
  • net-temps.com

An employment search resource site that I have not fully explored, but have similar links:

Helpful when looking for a job, but not job search sites:

Newly added

Not very good sites at the time I checked, but check anyway! They may have added since.

  • Welcome to DataFrenzy
  • jobs.internet.com
  • thingamajob.com
  • creativecentral.com/central.htm
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