| LED Digest 1519: A Plague of Open Relays |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. February 17, 2003 Issue #1519 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Welcoming Marketleap --== Competing with SEO Spammers ==-- ~ Joann Chokrach "...the meta description tag...is definitely worth using." ~ Thomas Yoon "I am a bit confused on the copyright notice..." --== Outsourcing Web Development ==-- ~ Neal Meaker "...developers keen on partnering with US companies must...meet the clients face to face." --== Techniques for Publishing Contact Info ==-- ~ Scott M. Stolz "Another way to avoid spambots is to not have the e-mail address on your site at all..." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Spam with Forged Headers ==-- ~ Eddie Teo ~ Dudley Dix ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Subscription Services ==-- ~ Wanda J. Crews ===== CONTINUING ================================= <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, Looks like a busy week ahead here on the LED. There are tons of posts coming in and I've got a few left from up to 2 weeks ago I haven't had room to publish yet. Hopefully I can do a bit of early spring cleaning this week and let those posts see the light of day. Thanks for all of your contributions. I understand how frustrating it can be to take time to compose a post and then not see it published. To those of you who've written me with those concerns, I just want you to know I read each and every post and do my best to publish all of them. In other news - I'm happy to welcome back Marketleap as our Key Sponsor this week - you may remember their sponsorship of the LED in late January. As you may recall, Marketleap is an Internet marketing and consulting firm that specializes in SEO. In addition to its consulting practice, Marketleap is an authorized value-added reseller of Inktomi's popular paid inclusion search marketing programs: Inktomi Search Submit and Inktomi Index Connect. Very worthwhile services to check into. Thanks for supporting our valued Key Sponsors. Their sponsorship enables us to continue offering this discussion list for free! Have a great week, Adam Audette ------------------- From: Joann Chokrach Subject: SE spammers > The search engines don't look at Meta tags these > days (except for Inktomi), so don't worry about this > too much. - Lorelle Smith, LED 1518 Thanks to spammers, it is true that most search engines do not use the META KEYWORD tag. However, all the major crawlers support the META DESCRIPTION tag, to some degree. If you have a meta description tag on your pages, you'll most likely see the content used in some way. It is definitely worth using. Google uses a "snippet" from the page by seeking the first text on the page that contains the search term. In some extremely rare instances, Google will use text in the meta description tag to form a snippet only when a page lacks enough text to let Google create a proper snippet from the body copy. > ... your most important keywords should go first. Put > the company name last or not at all... I also tack the > URL on the end of my title tags While META tags are used by search engines, TITLE tags are for humans - the people who visit your site. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the TITLE and /TITLE portions as shown in the example) will appear at the top of the browser, and in the "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" lists. Keep your titles under 64 characters (including spaces.) The first part of the title should describe what the page is about, followed by the company name (and geographical location if appropriate). Do not use keywords here, because if you do, your user won't remember what it was they bookmarked the page for in the first place. Even though it's bookmarked, it will most likely be ignored if they have bookmarked other sites with a more accurate title. (Based on usability testing of webpages). Using your company name in the title associates your name with your product or service. Eliminate the use of your company name only if you don't want people knowing who you are, or what you do. Joann Chokrach http://www.wits-end.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Thomas Yoon Subject: se spammers > Your copyright notice should read > "(C) 2002-2003. The current notice > "(C) 2002" makes it look like you > haven't done anything with the site > in over a year. - Joann Chokrach, LED 1516 > The copyright date should be changed only > when you revise or add to the text... many > visitors do assume the date shown is when > the site was last updated... - Lorelle Smith, LED 1518 I am a bit confused on the copyright notice: (c) 2002 seems OK to me. To me it means that you have created your copyrighted materials on 2002, and it will expire in perhaps 50 years or 100 years when it will become public property. What does (c) 2002 - 2003 mean? Does it mean that after 2003, the material is no longer copyrighted and people can copy it? Perhaps somebody can clarify on this? Thank you Thomas Yoon marworld.tripod.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Neal Meaker Subject: Outsourcing > So a question, if a non US source were to do my > website, do I have to worry about their spell check > not matching my spell check? - Vicki Lambert, LED 1516 Vicki raises a valid point regarding language differences. Most spell check programs can be set to US English, which no doubt the developer should use for US targeted traffic. In addition, I would recommend that the developer have the copy proof read by a US authority, to resolve grammatical errors and to use preferred terms. To answer Vicki's question, I would underscore that as the client, she would have the final word. Any errors that may get through can be resolved before accepting the developers work, prior to publishing and making the final payment. In August 2002, we travelled from New York through to Buffalo, specifically looking into the potential of South African products and services being offered to the USA (In line with the AGOA agreement of President Bush). Video conferencing has its advantages, but nothing beats an intimate understanding of the people and country that you are focusing on. Suffice to say, that when potential clients project values are collectively large enough, we believe that developers keen on partnering with US companies must be ready to visit the country and meet the clients face to face. Regards Neal Meaker AltonSA.co.za ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Scott M. Stolz Subject: Contact info Another Way to Avoid Spambots / Formail Security Issues: Another way to avoid spambots is to not have the e-mail address on your site at all. You can do this by having the customer submit a form instead of e-mailing you, and using nms FormMail. It's a Perl script from nms that is a drop-in replacement for formmail.pl. It fixes a bunch of security holes and also has the ability to store the e-mail recipient of the form inside the formmail script. That way your e-mail address is not even in the HTML code! Their address is http://www.scriptarchive.com/nms.html and you can download it and use it for free. Also, if you are using version 1.6 of Matt's version of FormMail, you need to upgrade to 1.92 or use nms FormMail instead. Version 1.6 has security holes in it that spammers can use to send out their spam from your server. So upgrade your formmail scripts today! You can get version 1.92 of Matt's FormMail at http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html if you don't want to use nms FormMail. Scott M. Stolz wistex.com ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Eddie Teo Subject: Forged spam > Your mail server can be configured to reject mail > from numeric IP addresses that are on one or more > blocklists provided by third parties. - Martyn Gay, LED 1518 Martin, I share Dudley's problem. My concern is not being blocked by ISP's around the world, as I agree with you the block procedures are far more complicated than that. However, my concern is that spammers are creating fake addresses using our domain name (e.g. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ), and sending mass mails out. They generally used open relay servers to achieve this. Problem 1 - All returned mails are sent to us (for unknown users, out of quota and so on), and we are facing tremendous problems trying to differentiate them from real returned mails (e.g. wrongly spelt addresses etc.) We get thousands of such returned mails on a daily basis! Problem 2 - On the users end, if they are using a spam blocker, they could block our domain names, and not all spam blockers (nor users of the software for that matter) are sophisticated enough to realized we did not send them the spam mails, they will just take it that abcde54321.com server are sending them the spam mails. In the end, if we are really trying to contact the users, our mails get bounced back. This is a really serious problem. The trouble is, there are a lot of mail servers out there that allows open relay! And we all know only the servers that allows open relay would be able to track down the sender of the spam mails, but most of them do not know how to (if they do, their servers will not be open for mail relay in the first place!). Email server software providers should set open relay to be closed in the first place, and warn of consequences if they are open (if some smart fellas decide to turn it on). Responsibilities of the email server software? If anyone has any solutions, please share. Thanks in advance. eddie teo Online Technology ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dudley Dix Subject: Forged spam > Today I have received spam emails that show two > of my own addresses as the sender, whereas I have > nothing to do with them. > I thought that maybe the company that owns [URL > removed] does not know how its site is being marketed > through a bulk email service... - Dudley Dix, LED 1517 Hi Adam, Thanks for publishing my mail of yesterday. You removed the URL of the offending website and I am not sure why. If the correct URL does not appear so that readers can see it for themselves then much of my mail is meaningless. I think that it is important that the address is shown, I don't think that it is an innocent address that has been hijacked and needs to be protected. This appears to be a company that is purposely doing illegal business and can harm us all. We all need to be aware of who and what is out there trying to railroad our businesses. The URL of the offending site is factorymanagement.com. Regards, DD Dudley Dix Yacht Design http://dixdesign.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Wanda J. Crews Subject: Subscription Services Hello! I am looking for a service which will provide my web site with the ability to accept payment for a one time only entrance into specified area of my site. An example of what I am looking for is what one would expect at the movie theater. You pay, walk in, enjoy the film, and leave. If you want to see the film again, you pay again. My expertise is not in the technical aspects, hence, my request for HELP! Thank you, Kind Regards, Wanda J. Crews ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
