Stupid ISP's (aka Freeserve)
Argh why can companies be so stupid sometimes? Andy was having a little problem with his email - mail was being reject for some reason with the following:
--> SMTP Error Code 500 --> SMTP Reason - Content type rejected
It seemed that my account was fine (as I had been receiving mail all day long), and that only some mails to andy were rejected.
After a little testing it turns out that any message with a subject of
--> Hello --> Hi
and such (still waiting for a full list if Freeserve decide to send it to me) are being reject no matter what's in the body.
So off I go and call Freeserve and they say that yes, they have implemented something new (oh and we forgot to mention this to our customers...) on the SMTP server so as to prevent mass-mailing worms that use the above-mentioned subject lines from spreading.
Well too damn bad that people (and I for one) often use subjects like that when mailing friends and family.
And the worst bit is that the sender of the rejected message is not told why their message was reject nor how to correct this problem. As for the Freeserve user, well they are not notified either that someone tried to mail them - so its upto the sender to figure out why the mail is not getting through and fix that.
Really had terrible experiences with Freeserve. Some of it includes:
--> Refusing to give names/surnames --> Refusing to give reference numbers for a call --> Looking at your password --> Requiring you to give them your password to "authenticate" yourself when you call in
I mean any decent ISP would never be able to see your password - why is it stored in plain-text anyway? And how can they let helpdesk staff (or staff of any kind) see your password.
Thats another really good reason to use separate passwords for whatever service you use.