www.pistonVOIDs.com
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PetrolTed

Original Poster:

34,468 posts

333 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
quotequote all
Occasionally I get an email from someone trying to use the classifieds system saying that the links I've sent them to edit their advert doesn't work.

I had an example this week.

The problem is that by the time that particular user has received the email from us, the URL has changed from www.pistonheads.com/sales/edit... to www.piston[b]VOID[/b]s.com/sales/edit...

It's obviously only some email clients but it's a bit weird!

Anyone seen anything like this before?

BliarOut

72,863 posts

269 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
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I've not seen it before, but it sounds like the sort of behaviour I would associate with a spam filter.

zumbruk

7,848 posts

290 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
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Not so much spam, as an overly eager porn filter.

roadsweeper

3,789 posts

304 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
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zumbruk said:
Not so much spam, as an overly eager porn filter.

That was my first guess, but I can't believe it would replace the word 'head', unless it thought the source of the email was already suspicious? The only other things that jump to mind is could it be something to do with character encoding or maybe HTML formatting (it's treating the word 'head' as a HTML tag)? They're both long shots though, sorry.

Having said the above, I sent an email to an American friend's corporate email account and it got bounced because it had the word 'ass' in it, which, unless I'm very much mistaken, is a perfectly legitimate use of the English language?

squirrelz

1,186 posts

301 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
quotequote all
1. Register pistonvoids.com
2. Point at same server as pistonheads.com

Job's a good'un

PetrolTed

Original Poster:

34,468 posts

333 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
quotequote all
squirrelz said:
1. Register pistonvoids.com
2. Point at same server as pistonheads.com

Job's a good'un


Nice bit of lateral thinking

squirrelz

1,186 posts

301 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
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hehe - alternatively, give sufficient window for someone else to register pistonvoids.com and point at a porn site :-)

zumbruk

7,848 posts

290 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
quotequote all
roadsweeper said:

zumbruk said:
Not so much spam, as an overly eager porn filter.


That was my first guess, but I can't believe it would replace the word 'head', unless it thought the source of the email was already suspicious?


Believe me, I've sat in meetings where HR departments wanted to filter out just about anything that could cause offence to anyone, anywhere. And some of the default dictionaries that come with American products are a wonder to behold.

It *is* quite amusing legitimately passing round lists of swear words in meetings, though....

Plotloss

67,280 posts

300 months

Thursday 28th July 2005
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People at Scunthorpe council started complaining after no email for 10 days...

Happens more than you'd credit I bet.

leosayer

7,836 posts

274 months

Friday 29th July 2005
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Plotloss said:
People at Scunthorpe council started complaining after no email for 10 days...

Happens more than you'd credit I bet.

I was at a footie match where a guy got advised that he might want to unfold his Scunthorpe banner fully, to avoid offence.

BliarOut

72,863 posts

269 months

Friday 29th July 2005
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You want to try setting up a content and e-mail filtering solution at a school in Scunthorpe.

squirrelz

1,186 posts

301 months

Friday 29th July 2005
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You know its gone too far when the list includes "ogle"
Of course, that was removed when we pointed out the name of a well known search engine.

_dobbo_

14,619 posts

278 months

Friday 29th July 2005
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surely any content matching can avoid partial matches by putting a space before and after the word.

zumbruk

7,848 posts

290 months

Saturday 30th July 2005
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_dobbo_ said:
surely any content matching can avoid partial matches by putting a space before and after the word.



Again, you'd be astonished how dumb some of these (very expensive) systems are. Makes you realise how good Perl Regular Expressions are ...

squirrelz

1,186 posts

301 months

Saturday 30th July 2005
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Ah, this was just a substring match, with no whitespace boundary checks.

Kinky

39,944 posts

299 months

Saturday 30th July 2005
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We used to have no end of trouble sending emails with our address in the footer ..... considering we were based in Middlesex

Only option was to remove it.

LongQ

13,864 posts

263 months

Saturday 30th July 2005
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A pal of mine moved to work in the states a few years ago. eamials bounced back and fore for a year os so and then not responses for a while. "Odd" I thought. Must be on holiday or busy. But one mail really did expect an answer, so I mailed his family home account and asked if all was well.

He checked with his corporate people and their new filter system. The implementation trapped suspect mails, diverted then to IT for assessment who then forwarded any that were not spam.

Apparently it took exception to me using 'chat' as in - 'we need to chat about that.' Seemed it was some sort of coded message in the US context.

But the real failure was not the divert to T but the human failure that meant they forgot (due to so many filtered messages) to pass it through!

Pigeon

18,535 posts

276 months

Sunday 31st July 2005
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Kinky said:
We used to have no end of trouble sending emails with our address in the footer ..... considering we were based in Middlesex

Only option was to remove it.

"Middx"?

thrush

53 posts

260 months

Friday 12th August 2005
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On the Scunthorpe front.

Went to college there and they had to get rid of the internet filter because geography students couldn't research the town