| LED Digest 1751: IE-only Websites and the Failures of ICANN |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ February 19, 2004 Issue #1751 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== ICANN's Failure ==-- ~ Bill Davison "...there will be no end to spam until there is a legal enforcement agency with teeth..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Mozilla vs Internet Explorer ==-- ~ Tom Williamson "There are presently some web sites that simply will not accept anything other than IE." ~ Janet Attard "One of my biggest beefs with designers is..." --== AOL Bouncing Email ==-- ~ Charles Oertel "Perhaps this is your problem..." ~ Shawn Coppock "[We] only include AOL accounts 60 days fresh on mass email from our servers." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Hacker Safe Certification? ==-- ~ Simon McArdle --== Scam: Domain Registry of America ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen --== Change in PayPal Policies ==-- ~ Dave McClure ======= NEW ===================================== From: Bill Davison Subject: ICANN's failure Many domain registrars blatantly allow domain owners to register intentionally inactive or false email addresses. These illegal, false registrations are a benchmark of domains that are nothing more than spamhouses. Obviously, this only leaves their hosts to lodge a complaint with. Often these hosts are also willing participants in spamhouse activity. Even a complaint to the more responsible hosting companies will only generate the obnoxious return email stating, "We are overwhelmed with complaints, please do not reply to this automatically generated brush off." This is why, email monitoring / filtering software is overwhelmed and daily becoming less effective. Therefore, I say again, there will be no end to the spam problem until there is a legal enforcement agency with teeth who is willing and able to put these low-lifes in jail and leave them to rot. Bill Davison bizwebpage.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Tom Williamson Subject: Mozilla I would like to chime in on the discussion about Netscape / Mozilla. I agree with all of the great things that has been said about it, but, in case anyone from Nestscape is listening, they have made some things worse in later versions. Change is not always progress. It used to be that one could edit the contents of various features in a text editor. For example, one could display the bookmark file in Wordpad and edit it. Can't do that any more. They've instituted some (what looks to me) senseless proprietary junk that limits making any changes to using the options in the software. I hate that and it was one of the things I did not like about Opera. Bring back the ability to edit the files in a text editor! Stop locking me into the way you (Netscape) want to do things. Now here is a change that really drives me crazy. They have instituted a search feature in bookmarks that returns all of the selections (using a particular search word) in a separate window. The problem with this is that *I can not display the comments associated with any of these selected returns*. That means I can not display any of the information I need to know about a particular web site without going through great difficulty. For example, in order to retrieve the comments I have to display the bookmark file in Wordpad and then do a word search there. If I try to look for the desired URL in the main bookmark list from within the software I have to literally look through hundreds of URLs one by one. Oh, and without going into detail. The news reader was best in version 4. GO BACK TO IT. There are presently some web sites that simply will not accept anything other than IE. It is almost like they were in league with Microsoft. One in particular is MaAfee anti virus. Is there a way to flame these people? I keep IE around for special circumstances, but I find this to be very inconvenient. On a positive note, one of the things I love about Netscape is the ability to create different profiles. I find that to be a wonderful feature that helps me to get organized. Thanks Tom Williamson ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Janet Attard Subject: Mozilla > Mozilla (particularly 1.5) seems to be much faster, stable > and honours CSS Level 2 much better... So I would like > to know from fellow LEDers whether Mozilla may soon > become the default browser of the web? - Viggie Bala, LED 1748 It's nice that 95% of browsers will display the page properly. But first they have to find it. And, looking at the source code, I suspect you'll have a hard time getting this to come up high (or at all?) in search engines. One of my biggest beefs with designers is they design without considering important aspects of a site other than design - particularly search engine placement. It's nice to have attractive artwork on a page, but even nicer when your pages come up high in search engines without spending much on advertising. Janet Attard Business Know-How http://www.businessknowhow.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Charles Oertel Subject: AOL bounces > On my last email blast 1600 AOL addresses > bounced back... this is an opt-in e-newsletter. - Verna Wiseman, LED 1747 > Are you by any chance sending the email > from a cable modem or other high speed > residential service? - Keith Daegele, LED 1750 Keith and Verna, in South Africa recent headlines announced that the IP-blocks used by our ADSL provider (Telkom) were blocked by spam-blockers. Telkom said that it was caused by spammers using ADSL to send their spam via SMTP. Apparently ordinary users would not be affected if they sent their mail via the SMTP server of their ISP. Perhaps this is your problem and a possible solution. I know that my ISP prevents my sending email to more than 50 addresses at a time, so I run a script that sends them one-at-a-time over an hour or so. regards Charles Oertel FineBushPeople.net ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shawn Coppock Subject: AOL bounces I too have experienced massive bounce backs and abuse reports from AOL accounts, which are also opt-in / opt-out lists. I don't believe that this has anything to do with "just" dynamic IP addresses, as I have a bank of static IP addresses. In our first encounter with this issue, AOL reported to our carrier, AT&T, numerous spam reports. I spoke with AT&T about this, and was told that AOL users have a "Report Spam" option with their email accounts, and they believed that many accounts either didn't recognize the emails, remember that they subscribed, or simply just didn't take time to view the email and hit the opt-out link. And in many cases, just blocked the address. So what we did on the next emailing, was omit all AOL accounts older than 60 days. We received no complaints from AT&T after that. And thus, that is our current practice, to only include AOL accounts 60 days fresh on mass email from our servers. We don't necessarily like doing this, but it saved us an enormous amount of grief with AT&T. We also took the added precaution in registering the domains associated with those IP addresses with Abuse.net and ensured that we had "abuse" email accounts setup "just in case". Another issue with AOL with regards to bounce-backs, is that AOL looks at DSL & cable class IP addresses, and (we believe) treats them differently than that of a T-1 class IP bank for example. Since we only send out mass email for a client once every 45 days or so, we use SDSL at 1.5MB (same speed as T-1) which was considerably cheaper and meets our needs. However, because the IP addresses associated with our SDSL account indicate that they are indeed classed as DSL ... AT&T believes, but would not confirm, that AOL and other ISP's may monitor those and/or block them or treat them differently. Contacting AOL about this was a vain attempt for us. I am interested in what approaches others may have taken with regards to AOL email issues as well. Shawn Coppock http://www.coppocktech.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Simon McArdle Subject: Hacker Safe > Anybody have any feedback, positive or negative, > on getting a site certified hacker safe? - Scott Marino, LED 1749 Hello Scott, One sure fire way of getting your site noticed by script kiddies trying to crash your code or break your web site is to advertise it as being unbreakable. Real hackers will break in regardless of your defences if they really want to. Real hackers use other methods to crack your site than just running a few scripts. This cannot be certified against. For instance a hacker could call your office pretending to be the support person. Then they could glean some valuable information from you. With the knowledge gained the hack is Childs play. How can anyone certify your site against this? I am not saying for one minute that you would fall for these tactics but many have in the past. Banks have been a particular target for obvious reasons. This is just one example of how a hacker can hack your site. Most security breaches in companies actually come from the inside... not the outside. You need to make sure you have those doors closed first. Regards, Simon McArdle ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Domain Registry of America I have not been reading lately - too busy - but I just wanted to let everyone know that Domain Registry of America is still sending out their deceptive mail pieces and one or our clients thought they were paying a renewal and in fact started the process for transferring the domain to droa.com. If your registrar offers domain locking, please use it. Not catching this kind of thing can result in higher registration fees ($20 a year) but can also result in your email and web site going down after the transfer, if they don't duplicate the existing settings. Thanks, Chris Nielsen Nielsen Technical Services http://www.home-medical-equipment-classifeds.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dave McClure Subject: Change in Paypal policy for buyers PayPal just launched some major new features last Friday that may be of interest to LED'ers... In response to *LOTS* of customer requests, we have finally introduced a "PayPal Account Optional" setting for US-based merchants using Buy Now, Donation, and Shopping Cart website payment types (working on availability for non-US merchants in the near future, and for other payment types). In addition, we also launched several new Checkout Customization & other related features: - Color & Logo customization of checkout pages - Accelerated checkout (receipt page optional) - USPS Shipping Integration & Label Printing - Partial Refunds to buyers - more info: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/mer/news-outside and introducing... - PayPal Germany site launch - https://www.paypal.de/ more info is available on the PayPal site & new PayPal Developer blog at http://paypal.typepad.com/pdn/ hope these new features are useful, and feel free to drop us a note with your feedback and suggestions! regards, Dave McClure http://www.paypal.com/pdn/ dmcclure [at] paypal [dot] com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We got no jobs, we got no money, our pets HEADS are falling off!" - Dumb & Dumber |
