The End of Spam
2007-06-18
Our office connection comes from Tiscali. It's a relic from the era of us reselling their ADSL, and I don't quite know why we haven't replaced it.
Anyway, I have a Python script that sends the data part of our bills to the customers who want it, because although I wanted to build it into the billing system that would be a little like trying to put ABS in a Model T Ford. It loads the address list that the billing system generates, and goes through the folder of data files it makes, MIME-encoding them and sending them.
Some time between last month's billing run and the one just gone, Tiscali put in mighty security measures: if you send more than 10 e-mails in a row, the SMTP server tells you where you can stick the 11th. (Or at least, it closes the connection.) This knocked my script over, of course, since when I write scripts for my own attended use I only write in enough robustness to make sure they don't ruin my data, and there's always an exception or two you don't get around to handling.
My respect for the ISP's new-found security waned when I wrote a routine to handle that exception. Sure enough, if you catch the exception, throw away the SMTP connection object and quietly open another, you can send another 10 mails just fine. And another 10, and so on.
It's a good thing the authors of spam mailing software aren't programmers. Oh, wait...
(To be fair, what Tiscali have done is fair enough. It'll make little difference, but it probably only took a little work, and that's a reasonable payoff. The rise of spam is a terrible thing and anything anyone can do to make a little difference is a good thing)
[Be nice if they told me, though. I do actually need to be able to bulk mail my customers.]
Anyway, I have a Python script that sends the data part of our bills to the customers who want it, because although I wanted to build it into the billing system that would be a little like trying to put ABS in a Model T Ford. It loads the address list that the billing system generates, and goes through the folder of data files it makes, MIME-encoding them and sending them.
Some time between last month's billing run and the one just gone, Tiscali put in mighty security measures: if you send more than 10 e-mails in a row, the SMTP server tells you where you can stick the 11th. (Or at least, it closes the connection.) This knocked my script over, of course, since when I write scripts for my own attended use I only write in enough robustness to make sure they don't ruin my data, and there's always an exception or two you don't get around to handling.
My respect for the ISP's new-found security waned when I wrote a routine to handle that exception. Sure enough, if you catch the exception, throw away the SMTP connection object and quietly open another, you can send another 10 mails just fine. And another 10, and so on.
It's a good thing the authors of spam mailing software aren't programmers. Oh, wait...
(To be fair, what Tiscali have done is fair enough. It'll make little difference, but it probably only took a little work, and that's a reasonable payoff. The rise of spam is a terrible thing and anything anyone can do to make a little difference is a good thing)
[Be nice if they told me, though. I do actually need to be able to bulk mail my customers.]
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