The Jaded Tech

Just like clockwork, I get these types of emails at least once a month. This time though, I decided that I’ll poke a bit of fun at these morons. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately) my ISP provider blocked anyone from sending to them. That’s ok, I just logged into my JadedTech email address and sent it from there. So here’s my response and including the full headers of the email address. Raw and unedited. It was a quickie response with little planning at all to the content.

*****

Wow, who would have thunk that such things existed on my Mountain cable
internet provider! Geeze, here I was thinking they were good at keeping
on top of such things. Well, guess I know better.

The world has been having hard times and I guess MountainCable.net has
been affected like everyone else. Sub-par spam software, not enough
anti-virus protection…heck, I’ve even been allowed to view porn while
surfing through their system (You’ll want to look up Brian Henry…..it’s
amazing stuff!)

So, I am surprised to see MountainCable.net support being outsourced to
Vietnamair.com.vn. I knew India was big for IT outsourcing but never once
though of Vietnam as being so interested in IT. I shall correct my
information immediately! Although I am also surprised that
Vietnamair.com.vn is hosted in Singapore! Wow, this world is truly a
Global Economy!

I’m sure glad you ain’t one of those scamming people from Nigeria. Those
guys are _real_ buggers, trying to get people to send them money. You can
read up on them at 419eater.com. Great stories there about people who are
aware of such tactics and how they can prevent from being scammed for
their life savings.

So, in keeping with the spirit of being ‘above board’ and ‘legal’, I have
taken the liberty of including the full-headers of your email address and
replied to all known authorities and reporting agencies as well as The
Dean Blundell show (www.edge.ca) because I think it should be well and
duly noted that Vietnamair.com.vn provides such a great service as to
offer to validate our email address and passwords on behalf of
MountainCable.net.

And so, in complying with your request, please find my email address and
password below. Note, the email address you sent to is merely an alias
and only the one listed below is my _true_ email address.

email address:
douchebagscammer@mountaincable.net.tv.whereever.omygodthisisalongemailaddress.com

Password: password.

(Do NOT forget the “.” at the end, otherwise you’ll lock out my account
and I NEED my emails to surf the Interwebs!!!”

*******

Return-Path: X-Original-To: xxxxx@mountaincable.net
Delivered-To: xxxxx@mountaincable.net
Received: from birch4.localdomain (birch4.localnet [172.16.0.27])
by mail-prim.mountaincable.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9188BAE004F;
Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:24:48 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by birch4.localdomain (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E5863DA;
Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:24:51 -0400 (EDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: Clam AntiVirus at mountaincable.net
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: 3.99
X-Spam-Level: ***
X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.99 tagged_above=0 required=5
tests=[AV:Sanesecurity.Phishing.Fake.9376.UNOFFICIAL=0.1,
BAYES_05=-1.11, L_AV_SS_Phish=5]
Received: from birch4.localdomain ([127.0.0.1])
by localhost (birch4.localnet [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
with ESMTP id vTvgNsSHzgkO; Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:24:50 -0400 (EDT)
Received-SPF: none (vietnamair.com.vn: No applicable sender policy
available) receiver=birch4.localnet; identity=mfrom;
envelope-from=”reservation.sfo@vietnamair.com.vn”; helo=sdf.lonestar.org;
client-ip=192.94.73.20
Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (ol.freeshell.org [192.94.73.20])
(using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits))
(Client did not present a certificate)
by birch4.localdomain (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AF8AA26F;
Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:24:50 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from webmail.freeshell.org (IDENT:nobody@mx.freeshell.org
[192.94.73.19])
by sdf.lonestar.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n7GK7rDb007456;
Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:07:53 GMT
Received: from got80-74-137-161.ch-meta.net ([80.74.137.161])
(SquirrelMail authenticated user bjlove)
by webmail.freeshell.org with HTTP;
Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:07:54 -0000 (UTC)
Message-ID:
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:07:54 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Termination Of Your MOUNTAINCABLE.NET Webmail Account.
From: “WEBMAIL VIRUS ALERT UPDATE” Reply-To: reservation.sfo@vietnamair.com.vn
User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.17
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Importance: Normal
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

*********************************************************************************************
Dear User,

Termination Of Your MOUNTAINCABLE.NET Webmail Account.

We are currently carrying out an upgrade on our system, due to the fact
that it has come to our notice that one or more of our subscribers are
introducing a very strong virus which is spreading really fast into our
system and it is affecting our network.We are trying to find out the
specific user. Please you are advised to change the password on your
account in order to prevent any unauthorized account access.

All Mail hub systems will undergo regularly scheduled maintenance. Access
to your e-mail via the Web mail client will be unavailable for some time
during this maintenance period. We are currently upgrading our data base
and e-mail account center i.e homepage view. We shall be deleting old
accounts which are no longer active to create more space for new accounts
users. we have also investigated a system wide security audit to improve
and enhance our current security against virus and spammers.

In order to continue using our services you are require to update and
re-confirmed your email account details as requested below. To complete
your account re-confirmation, you must reply to this email immediately
and
enter your account details as requested below.

Information Required

Full E-mail Address:
Username :
Password:

Failure to do this will immediately render your account deactivated from
our database and service will not be interrupted as important messages
may
as well be lost due to your declining to re-confirmed to us your account
details.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause you during this
period, but trusting that we are here to serve you better and providing
more technology which revolves around email and internet. It is also
pertinent, you understand that our primary concern is for our customers,
and for the security of their files and data.

Hoping to serve you better.

Sincerely,

MOUNTAINCABLE.NET mail Support

********************************************************************************************
This is an Administrative Message from Mail server. It is not spam. From
time to time, MOUNTAINCABLE.NET mail server will send you such messages
in
order to communicate important information about your subscription.

********************************************************************************************

I want you to have Wild Boys by Duran Duran running through your head right now. This will give you the sense of chaos that envelops the IT world. You would think that a world of ONLY 1s and Zeros could get pretty stright forward. Seriously, every computer out there only knows logical responses. It is either 1 or 0. On or off. Yes or No. Black or White (Thank you Michael Jackson for pointing that out). So how is it that Windows manages to screw up so often? Who keeps changing all those little bits and bytes to the wrong decision eh?

See, every thinks that computers understand what the letter ‘a’ is or the number ‘2′. Hell, most people think that a computer ‘knows’ what an email or picture is. They don’t know shit. (I’ll let you figure out if I mean the computers or the people). So, our ‘modern society’ so far advanced that somehow they beleive that ’searching’ is actually random. And that using Wildcards actually make the search ‘better’ or to include more.

At work I run a report using wildcards. For those who don’t know the term, in respect to technology, the same concept in a card game applies here. The point of a wildcard is to be anything you want it to be. For example, you can do a Google search for automobile and get 121 Million hits. If you do the search with a wildcard, i.e. *mobile, then you get 1.25 Billion hits. The wildcard broadens the search to any word that ends with ‘mobile’ or any site that uses the world mobile on its own. In essence, when you use a wildcard for searching, your results will include everything with that term. At least that is the theory.

I run this report at work using wild cards and there is information missing that should have been included. So I create an internal ticket to discover why the search did not cover some information that it missed. Then I get told that using wildcards won’t bring up the information I looked for. I am supposed to search for the terms directly. Hang on a second….I’m being told I need to know what I’m looking for BEFORE I look for it? Did I just hear that?

The same schmuck also told me that ‘most likely your search result was from….’ to which I replied “We don’t accept guesses as answers…”. You ain’t gonna use a ‘wildcard’ answer on me!

So now I’m onto finding out who is responsible for the database searches and not this internal clown that really doesn’t get it. Well, that just turned out to be a fruitless search. In this company, noobody knows anyone who knows anything about who’s responsible. And if that sentence was completely and grammatically incorrect, then you have just experienced the mental quagmire that the IT world oozes and wallows in.