Category Archives: email

Two examples of why the CDC is the Keystone Kops of disease control

I want to give two examples, one medical and one technological, of the kind of buffoonery that the CDC is engaging in that continues to make them untrustworthy as a disease-control organization. Medical buffoonery Here are some things that COVID-19 research and recently collected epidemiological data are telling us at the moment: Here is what… Read More »

How to protect your anonymity online when the services you use could be breached

Twitter is in the news again with another security breach in which 235 million users’ email addresses, phone numbers, and Twitter handles were exposed. These seems like a good opportunity to talk about what you can / should do to protect yourself if you need to maintain anonymity online. The basic rule is this: if… Read More »

Taking your contacts with you when you switch jobs, without stealing from your former employer

I’ve worked almost entirely for startups for the past 30+ years. It’s what I love, but switching jobs a lot comes with the territory. One of the problems I face with each switch is how to take with me outside contacts I’ve made, without compromising my soon-to-be-ex-employer’s intellectual property. Sure, I’ve added some of them… Read More »

Adding malicious IPs in DNSBLs to iptables automatically

[This is an updated version of Adding malicious IPs in DNSBLs to hosts.deny automatically which uses iptables instead of tcpwrappers, since tcpwrappers has been deprecated.] I run my own mail server, which means that there are hackers trying 24×7 to break into the server by connecting to my SMTP or IMAP server and trying to guess… Read More »

Generic reply to unsolicited vendor sales emails

Dear sales representative who wants me to buy your company’s products, If I’ve emailed you a link to this blog posting, it’s probably because you’ve sent me multiple unsolicited sales emails. Welcome to the club of vendors from whom I’m unlikely to ever purchase anything! No unsolicited sales email I have ever received from a… Read More »

It’s 2020, and companies still don’t know how to send emails that don’t look like spam

I received this email at 1:15 this morning: When I saw it this morning, I was confused. I have never before received an email from “loyaltygateway.com”, and I was asleep at 1:15am, not placing an “order” to be confirmed by this email as its subject implies. It sure looks like spam, right? Well, it turns… Read More »