TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Today in clicking a link in TechSpot Newsletter I got an avalanche of windows unserious, untrustable, apparently trying to hurt my computer.

I at once sent an email to one of the staff members to report them about the incident. That mail was rejected: « Diagnostic SMTP : 550-rejected Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?81.255.54.16\r\n550 ».

A company that spams their visitors, then calls "spam" a polite attempt at reporting, is not worth reading any more. I at once unsubscribed and won't read again.

Versailles, Fri 27 Jul 2007 09:37:25 +0200

hi
`Spam is very bad these day's you have to be very carefull
these days of opening mail that looks innocent and when it
is opend a person finds that it is spam...
i feel for you....

I don't get it... we send a newsletter on a weekly basis. The newsletter is opt-in meaning you must register and confirm your email address to be added in our list. The newsletter only has links that point to TechSpot.com or Neowin.net content, in other words, you can trust it.

Is it me or you are having PC trouble beyond our newsletter?

I just tried again the same link, A look at the OLPC computer, and this time it came OK, just as the other ones in the TS Newsletter that had worked seconds before, during, and seconds after that faulty one.

But what I can't admit (even if that uncivilized habit is widely spread and not specific to TechSpot) is that a company, while pouring ~30KB weekly newsletters on "customers", feels spammed when receiving a one-time-only ~30KB carefully written email (please don't argue about such rejecting done using this or that automated or manual process). Customers have to dig daily in flows of spam to select the 2% legit email it contains, there is no reason why companies would not do the same.

Versailles, Fri 27 Jul 2007 12:00:15 +0200

Give Techspot a second chance. Check for Spyware.

Also,if you have any of the following,they might explain the rejection of your email -

Vacation messages, auto-responses, challenge-response spam filters and virus-notification messages.

I think whatever "avalanche of windows unserious, untrustable, apparently trying to hurt my computer" you got is because your browsing habits have caused some nasty spyware to get onto your computer which caused what you saw. I'd bet my lunch money that you are using IE and Outlook or Outlook Express.

I get the newsletter along with hundreds or thousands of other people and have not expierenced what you described. I imagine if many people did there would be a lot more complaints about it than just from you. Sounds like the problem is on your end.

You should probably go over to the Security and the Web forum and read some of those sticky threads at the top of the forum to get your problem straightened out.

I have no idea what could have caused the rejection. I know for a fact (because responses arrive to my personal techspot email) that every reply, even if automated, makes it to my inbox, and I don't use any special spam filter on my PC that would generate such a bounce.

I've gotten the Techspot newsletter for over a year, without a bad link. My browser for Email is IE6, but it's heavily "Verizonized". I do however, use Firefox (with "no script" installed) to actually follow links that lead away from Techspot and Neowin. It is unreasonable to expect Techspot and/or Neowin to be aware of every potential pop-up and piece of treachery on the net. A person could go into Documents and settings and start deleting the (most likely) 100s of cookies, hey, could help, couldn't hurt.

Thanks Julio for replying.

My message was sent too fast, I was upset after being once more hit by unfair (and dangerous) advertizing, and I didn't make sure it was due to TS' advertizer(s). When opening the OLPC link in an IE window, it was at once replaced by another page, that made the window increase to the size of the screen without using "Full Screen", hence overwriting my default window size (a common trick among some sites as you propably know); another small IE window opened near the top left corner and launched a series of 3 or 4 other IE windows before I killed them all in a hurry (I assume you also know this kind of tricks, that sometimes gets worse, hiding the small launching window out of the screen, thus gaining a couple seconds before you have a chance to think of hunting it, bringing it back in the screen or directly killing it).

I upload my email message (actually was 59KB, sorry I also didn't notice that including the 29KB TS Newsletter inflated my message this big). I had sent it on Fri 27 Jul 2007 09:13:50 +0200 to TechSpot > About > Staff Contact Info > Justin Mann - News Editor - justin@techspot.com. I was replied as shown here after my sig (full header, full message, full attachement). Sorry for the long message, stuff and facts is sometimes better IMO, even if somewhat long, than unaware discussions and assumptions.

Versailles, Sat 28 Jul 2007 02:11:15 +0200


----- Message -----
From: "Service de distribution du courrier" <postmaster@laposte.net>
To: <michel.merlin@laposte.net>
Sent: Fri 27 Jul 2007 09:14:09 +0200
Subject: Notification d'état de la distribution
Attach: ATT00521.dat (417 bytes)

- Ces destinataires ont été traités par le serveur de messagerie :
justin@techspot.com; Échec; 5.1.1 (adresse de boîte aux lettres de destination incorrecte ou inexistante)

ATM à distance inbound.filter.theplanet.com : Diagnostic SMTP : 550-rejected Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?81.255.54.16\r\n550 (81.255.54.16)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return-Path: <michel.merlin@laposte.net>
Received: from smtp.laposte.net (10.150.9.33) by mx.laposte.net (7.2.060.1)
id 46A93E9F000205CB for justin@techspot.com; Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:14:02 +0200
Received: from smtpin.laposte.net (10.150.9.74) by smtp.laposte.net (7.3.118.3)
id 4686C17B036D747E for justin@techspot.com; Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:14:01 +0200
Received: from U223 (62.147.101.234) by smtpin.laposte.net (7.2.060.1) (authenticated as michel.merlin)
id 46658920003AE34E for justin@techspot.com; Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:14:01 +0200
Message-ID: <01df01c7d01d$af6a0b60$9301a8c0@U223>
From: "Michel Merlin" <michel.merlin@laposte.net>
To: "Justin Mann \(TechSpot News Editor\)" <justin@techspot.com>
References: <468356F203C7F242@> (added by postmaster@smtp.laposte.net)
Subject: Re: TechSpot and Neowin Newsletter
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:13:50 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_01DA_01C7D02E.72152590"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3138
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3138

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----- ATT00521.dat -----
Reporting-MTA: dns; mx.laposte.net
Received-from-MTA: dns; smtp.laposte.net (10.150.9.33)
Arrival-Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:14:02 +0200

Final-Recipient: rfc822; justin@techspot.com
Action: Failed
Status: 5.1.1 (bad destination mailbox address)
Remote-MTA: dns; inbound.filter.theplanet.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-rejected Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?81.255.54.16\r\n550 (81.255.54.16)

Attached Files

Re_ TechSpot and Neowin Newsletter.zip (9.6 KB, 1 views)

this reminds me if you open any mail from freewebs.com or freewebz.com forget which one but i recieved a trojan from opening it on yahoo mail before

Michel Merlin, I have been connecting to this forum and website for a number of months... about 8 months, at least. I have never seen the problem you describe. I use Firefox.

It's been a year for me, and I never received any problem with any newsletter nor this website/forum .

The poster has already retracted much of his original comments.
Thread closed.

So you get to decide when a thread is closed?

raybay, cfitzarl, such problems are very annoying, you only need to be hit 2ice or 3ice in a decade to remember very well. The benign one (window default size overwritten) is frequent, but for the other (avalanche of windows opening) it's my 3rd-4th time in all (in 12 years), and my 1st on TS (and I am not sure it was launched from TS: the other page that covered TS page in its IE window may have been launched by something else, even if it happened at once; I have usually 20-30 IE6 windows open concurrently); fortunately I saw it immediately and could stop before it extended too much. It may be an ad in the TS page, which would explain that after the avalanche was stopped, refreshing the TS page got its adds replaced with new ones, not affected.

I don't think Firefox would protect from such annoyances; OTOH IE6/OE6 warn ahead of most vulnerabilities, earlier than Security Suites. And last time I checked FF (2.0.0.4) it was still slow and unable of a couple very mundane tasks (Dragging a link into its Address or Title Bar failed; a colored link in a header was blank until refresh).

I am sorry again to have too quickly blamed TechSpot (I think however that Justin should check his antispam). Thanks to all for contributions.

Versailles, Sun 29 Jul 2007 08:19:50 +0200