From: Earle Martin Date: 23:03 on 30 Oct 2003 Subject: Idiotic mail filtering An easy target: really stupid software that "filters" mail (read: blocks it for idiotic reasons). I just got a call from my dad asking me if I knew why a mail he sent to someone had been returned as blocked. I got him to forward me the error message. Here it is: -------- From: postmaster@xxxx.xxx.xx To: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:50:06 +0160 (BST) Subject: From: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Your Message has not been delivered because of LVSC's content policy. Details: - Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:50:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: Sender: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Recipient(s): [ someone ]@lvsc.org.uk Scenario: Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity: The operation completed successfully. Text Analysis Results This report describes the search expressions found in this message. Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity found the following search expressions in '0.0.0': * The phrase 'britney spears' was found at the location(s): 4. -------- I would be amused that the software has reclassified the Pop Princess as being obscene, were it not for the fact that it's resulted in my dad's mail being rejected. The thing he didn't understand was that he didn't actually mention her in the original mail, which he sent to me too. It took one glance at it to work out why. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ That's right - Yahoo! Mail's software inserted Britney into my dad's mail as an advert at the bottom, and imbecilic software at the other end rejected it because of that. Fucking dimwits. Yes, lvsc.org.uk, I'm looking at you!
From: Earle Martin Date: 23:25 on 30 Oct 2003 Subject: ClearSwift MAILsweeper (was: Idiotic mail filtering) On a tangent to my existing hate of ClearSwift MAILsweeper (which a bit of Googling for the error messages leads me to believe it was that blocked my dad's mail): > Scenario: Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity: The operation completed > successfully. > > Text Analysis Results > > This report describes the search expressions found in this message. > Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity found the following search expressions in > '0.0.0': > > * The phrase 'britney spears' was found at the location(s): 4. What the fuck kind of error message is this? It's almost totally useless to the user. These things will make no sense to someone like my dad: * "Scenario" - complete with path to the filter for fuck's sake * "The operation completed successfully" - what operation? says Dad * "search expressions" - whats? * "in '0.0.0'" - huh? * "at the location(s): 4." - this is my favourite. It's too dumb to know whether to make the word location into a plural, and then it gives you a number with no context. 4 what? It can't be locations, because the string only appeared once. And it can't be line 4, because it occurred after about ten lines. So the error message could have read: - Your mail was rejected because it contained the following words proscribed by our filtering policy: Britney Spears. It could include an event reference number too, perhaps, which could refer to a system log. All the rest is totally unnecessary junk. According to their website: ------ Why choose CS MAILsweeper for SMTP * The world's #1 for email content security * Optimizes network performance * Feature rich and comprehensive * Provides intuitive e-policy wizards * Up to 100% increase in performance * Prevents virus infiltration * Prohibits denial of service attacks * Protects intellectual property * Maintains compliance ------ I think that speaks for itself, don't you?
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