“Spammer.” Comcast can verify it if someone asks. (If you’re willing to wait on hold and be transferred 5 times.)
This morning I tried to send mail to the support team at my webhosting company. I got an error back that the SMTP server was refusing connections. Now, this is entirely possible, as they recently moved to a new data center and are still ironing out the bugs, but then I tried to send it using my .Mac account. Still wouldn’t send. Okay, that’s just wrong… .Mac has its own server. Rebooted, reset my router and cable modem, checked for all the usual crap… nothing worked. Just on a hunch, I logged into Comcast’s web site to see if they had some sorta bulletin, maybe they were having network issues. When I logged in, I got a note that I had 3 e-mail messages. Okay, I guess I never set up Thunderbird to check Comcast mail automagically… most recent message is from their Security Assurance team:
Dear Comcast Subscriber:
ACTION REQUIRED: Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email (“spam”), which is generally an indicator of a virus. For your own protection and that of other Comcast customers, we have taken steps to prevent further transmission of spam from your computer(s).
Say WHAT?
After checking Google, I find that this translates to “we’ve taken the liberty of blocking port 25” and it’s happened to a lot of people (who were also not spamming, if they are to be believed.) So I jumped on the phone to call support, since there was no indication anywhere in the mail about who to call, how to appeal the decision, etc. The only thing the message offered as “help” was a link to a Knowledge Base article on how to reconfigure your e-mail client to use port 587. Well, that’s nice and all that, but my web host doesn’t use 587. This would mean that all my outgoing mail had to go through Comcast’s SMTP server instead of the ones I pay for. Didn’t that used to get blocked as spam years ago? Sending an e-mail from one domain through another? Yeah, I think it was called Relaying or something like that…
Front-line tech says sorry, I’ll submit the paperwork to have the block removed, it should take about an hour. (This was around 3pm.) The more I thought about it though, the more I was bothered by them calling me a spammer. What proof did they have of this? I did some checking on various sites and found a TON of people complaining that the same thing had happened to them – Comcast just decided to block their mail for spamming. Thousands of spam messages being sent out every hour, and Comcast is blocking the legitimate customers. Lovely.
I called Comcast again, and asked to talk to someone in their Security Group. Sat on hold for 20 minutes (listening to the usual “your call is important to us” guy) until I finally got some condescending ass who wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise. He apparently had some sorta report that said I was a spammer, and there was no removal of the block. No appeals process. No debate. No shit. He then told me that it was probably a virus – they get a lot of that. Wow, so glad I spent that money on a Mac laptop so I could catch all those e-mail viruses out there. Naturally he was not able to present any proof that I was a spammer – that might reveal the methods they use to determine who is and is not a spammer. Um… hello? Your methods are flawed anyway, so who cares if I know what they are? Then he attempts to explain to me that Mac computers can get infected (yeah, all 12 of them) and that was probably what happened. Sure. Okay.
After half an hour of being told “we’re Comcast, we don’t care, we don’t have to” (please someone make sure Lily Tomlin is getting royalty checks from Comcast) I gave up. I was about to check with GSINet about the possibility of going back to DSL, when I decided I was gonna call one more time. I read a couple postings from people who said they got better results after threatening to cancel their service, so that’s what I did. I was transferred to their (Anal) Retention Team, where I was given a lesson in “left hand, what’s the right hand doing?” She told me the e-mail should have given me instructions on how to appeal the block (it did not) and then quoted back to me the stuff about reconfiguring my mail client (doesn’t work.) She then says there isn’t anything they can do at her level because the Network Abuse group doesn’t even talk to them (the Network Abuse group, incidentally, is located on 1 Ivory Tower Road.) She transfers me to a supervisor because, well, why not? I apparently haven’t met their quota for “transfers to useless people.” At this point I am feeling like Shelley Berman trying to explain to the phone company how the pay phone took my last dime. The supervisor was very sorry and understood completely why I was so upset (she’s a supervisor because her lies are more convincing than the standard tech lies.) She promises to transfer me to someone in their Network Abuse group, as it’s possible I spoke to some outsource group the first time (he didn’t sound Indian to me.) She transfers me to someone whose first language appeared to be “Blinglish”, who then transferred me again.
10 minutes later I get someone else, who told me there are four ways it could have happened : my wireless network was insecure (not), someone infected my system with a virus (not), I got infected with spyware (not), or someone accidentally tagged my e-mail as spam (entirely possible, but not something anyone has control over.) So out of those four, the only one that could have happened is the last – I send out an e-mail, possibly on a mailing list, and someone marked it as spam. So, if that really is the case, why am I being penalized for it? She began to insist that I was not being penalized, so I cut her off and said okay fine, inconvenienced. I also have a black mark on my account saying I got blocked for spam, which I was not at all happy about. She then explained to me how a Mac CAN get infected by a virus (which technically IS true, but even if someone bothered to write one, it couldn’t install itself without the user entering an admin password. As usual, the weakest link is the user.) I assured her that this was absolutely NOT the case, and that there are regularly only two things on my network at any given moment – my MacBook and an XBOX 360 (and I DEFY ANYONE to prove that my XBOX was sending spam!) Just to humor them, however, I downloaded a copy of ClamAV and scanned my system while I was on hold. Came up with a couple hits in my e-mail trash bins because they appeared to be phishing scams (which is why they were in the trash…) but nothing that would qualify as a “virus.” The only reason virus programs for the Mac even exist is so you don’t receive an infected e-mail attachment and then forward it off to your unsuspecting Windows-using friends.
She said the block would be lifted in about 10 minutes. I just checked, and mail works again. It’s now 6:30pm. Good thing I had nothing better to do today.