Spam Spam Spam Spam, Spam Spam Spam Spam, Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam

This morning I got an unsolicited SMS spam “Home owners ? do u need money? R100,000 @ R752 pm! Reply YES and we?ll phone you”. I know that everybody gets things like this and they just shrug them off, but I have a rabid hatred of spammers.

With e-mail spam, there’s normally nothing you can do. The spammers are on the other side of the world, and they’ve used a botnet. But when I get something from South Africans, I act. We have the ECT act protecting us against spam. It’s not the most effective anti-spam legislation, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll send the IOZ Spam Message to the spammers, their ISP, the domain registrants etc etc. Usually I get a response. Usually they remove me from their lists. (If they don’t, their VP of marketing is going to have me harassing him over the phone in short order.) But of course they rarely mend their ways. Sometimes we end up in long e-mail arguments backwards and forwards, them saying “but I’m justified in spamming, because of foo”, me saying “no bloody way, because of bar” etc. It’s ineffectual and depressing, but at least I’m doing something to deter spammers and keep South Africa relatively clean.

But enough about e-mail. It’s time for some tips on dealing with SMS-spam. The SMS Spamming industry (euphemisms: direct marketing, wireless application service provider) is attempting to regulate itself rather than be regulated by government. They’ve formed WASPA and signed the sms code of practice. WASPA lets you file complaints against its members and fines them (although the fines are rather paltry).

I heard about them via Jeremy Thurgood’s recent spam-scapades. His spammers were charging R1 to opt-out. While the WASPA code of conduct allows a <=R1 fee, I agree with him that this is intolerable extortion.

In my case, my spammers had broken a few WASPA code of conduct rules:

5.1.1.: They didn’t identify themselves in the SMS
5.1.2.: There is no opt-out facility that I know of.
5.1.4.: There is no advertised opt-out procedure.
5.2.1.: I’m very careful about not allowing people to spam me, so I’m pretty sure they failed all the options. I’d like them to prove otherwise.

I looked up the originating number on the SMS Code website. It belongs to Celerity Systems. They are currently under a suspended sentence at WASPA, so my WASPA complaint should force them to fork out a fine. Lets hope for the best.

I’m against capital punishment, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a few spammers being hanged, drawn and quartered :-)

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A telecoms rant

You’d think that telecoms (esp in South Africa, where being one is a license to print money) would do everything they could to get you to spend money with them? If only.

Cellphones (at least Vodacom) have always required you to manually enable International phone calls & International roaming, by giving them a call and requesting it. This is a pain, to say the least. And you normally forget until you are already in another country.

But Telkom have taken this to a new level. I got a new phone line last month (which still doesn’t have working DSL, grr!), and just noticed that I can’t make International calls on it. So I phone telkom. Amazingly I didn’t have to wait on hold at all (something never before experienced when calling the beast), and the lady I spoke to told me I have to “Visit a Telkom Shop with my ID”. WTF? How hard are they making it to spend money on them?

Is there any legitimate reason that international calls are blocked? With our pricing, it’s easy to knock up a multi-k-ZAR bill without even thinking about dialling an international number, so they aren’t protecting anyone.

In related news, the reason you can’t have incoming connections on Vodacom 3G (even with “internetvpn”) is because then you’d be liable for the cost of any DOS you received. Isn’t this a problem that hosting providers and ISPs already have to deal with? Why are mobile operators special? We need some Internet Neutrality and Telecoms sense in this country…

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Vodacom: internetvpn APN

A quick tip for Vodacom 3G / GPRS / EDGE users in South Africa.

There is a special APN called “internetvpn” for laptop users who connect to corporate VPNs. While this probably doesn’t interest most readers, it is a useful APN to use because:

You get a real Public IP address, not a private NATted one.
You get lower latency.
The cost is the same. (i.e. regular data bundles work fine)

If you use a VPN, this will probably make it more reliable, and if you don’t it will at least make your ssh use more comfortable.

Unfortunately, the following vodacom issues will still be present:

No incoming TCP connections (i.e. you can’t serve web pages from or ssh into your laptop)
Often you get “martian” DNS servers (10.11.12.13 and 10.11.12.14). Either reconnect, or manually set your DNS servers to 196.43.46.190 (SAIX) and 196.207.40.165 (Vodacom).
TCP connections are regularly reset. (Overloaded NAT/Firewall hardware?)

How to get it:

Call vodacom customer care (111).
Follow the IVR menu options in the directions of data cards.
Ask them to enable the “internetvpn APN” (you might have to explain it to them)
Reconfigure your phone / chat script / “data card driver” to use “internetvpn” instead of “internet”
Profit! :-)

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Uncapped Local access

We’ve read that Telkom is implementing uncapped local access, as mandated by ICASA. The regulation states “local bandwidth shall not be subject to the cap”, but nobody seriously thinks Telkom will follow this to the letter. There is a huge market in inter-office VPNs over ADSL, and Telkom don’t want to lose out on that revenue stream.

Currently the savvy users out there use hacks like mine to least-cost-route local traffic over cheaper IS “Local-Only” accounts (like these). Hell, even ISPs route their clients’ local traffic over the IS Local-Only accounts.

From what I’ve heard from the friendly frogs, Telkom are really just going to keep it simple, and implement the equivalent of IS DSL accounts, where after you get capped, you get another, local-only cap. This can be implemented with Radius only, and will (to some extent) prevent the service from being abused be everybody.

So yes, we all still need our separate IS Local-Only accounts, and do our own LCR.

Anybody who thinks Telkom is doing any good for South Africa, go and sit in a corner now!

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We lost Wikimania 2008

We lost Wikimania 2008, quite badly (by points). I’m obviously sad, because I was hopeful, and had invested the odd weekend into comparative flight pricing, bid editing, and sitting on the phone…

According to the published criteria, we should have done well. Somehow we managed to score lower than Alexandria on “rotation” which is odd because Wikimania has never been held in the Southern Hemisphere.

I’d have liked too see the IRC log from the judges meeting, to see where we lost our points, but of course that isn’t going to happen, so we’ll have to work it out ourselves, by comparing the bids.

In retrospect, our bid wasn’t that great. We were pinning more hopes on our location, and Cape Town’s attractions, then on the bid itself. It was expensive, last-minute, and lacking sponsership & good accommodation. By losing, we got our chance to get it right next time.

The good news, is bidding opens for Wikimania 2009 almost immediately. I don’t know what the chances are of 2009 being in Africa again, but I’m assuming we are going to bid, if everyone can pick themselves up and get going on it. To do it, w e are going to need firm sponsors. Find any friends you have corporate contacts, and twist their arms.

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Petrol Theft?

Yes, petrol is now expensive enough, that it’s worth the risk to steal it from someone else.

On friday night, some bastard cut the fuel lines of all 4 cars parked outside our house. We are probably the only people on our street who don’t park behind an electric gate, because our driveway only has space for my parents cars on the property. My car lives on the council-owned part of our driveway.

I found out because my sister (who’d been visiting to use our Internet connection) broke down on the way home. With her car, this is perfectly normal, and to be expected. I went out to tow her home (she was only about a 500m away). I couldn’t find the tow hook on my car (my Golf has removable tow hooks, and somebody once broke into my car and stole the jack-set containing the removable hook), but I did notice that my car was trailing a line of petrol… odd… I went back to borrow my father’s car (with a tow-bar), and towed her home with that.

She was going to borrow my mother’s car (she usually does that when my mother is away, and her car breaks down), but noticed that there was a pool of petrol under it, too. Very odd…

At this point, I put 2 and 2 together, and found that all of the cars had cut lines. In the case of my father’s car, they hadn’t got a fuel line, but had god a brake sensor line instead. (Apparently VWs all have the fuel lines on the outside for safety, so they are the easy targets). On my car, they had only cut the fuel return line, so it could still drive, but would trail petrol.

The police were quick to come, but not very helpful: they said they’d never seen anything like it. They were thinking vandalism or neighbour issues. The questions were “Do you have a dog?” “Do you get on with your neighbours?” etc. You can tell what the normal problems in our area are :-)

The AA refused to come and help or tow the cars to my mechanic, saying the damage was an “insurable risk”. I thought most car problems were “insurable risks” and the reason one has AA membership is to sort things out afterwards? This refusal by them is unacceptable, what if it had happened when I was parked somewhere else? Would I have to get my car home by myself?

Fortunately my grandmother’s car was in storage in her garage, and I could rescue it. My sister stole her mother’s car, too. But I’ve now got a whole lot of paperwork to sort out, and 4 dead cars to get repaired… As I said, “Bastards!”

Photos here

Update:

None of the cars have empty tanks, so if they were trying to steal petrol, they didn’t succeed.
The damage came to R500 for the VWs, which isn’t bad at all. (Replacing the lines would be a mission, my mechanic repaired them). Excluding many hours of towing, phone calls, e-mail, and SMSs, though.

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Phone SPAM again

“Do you need cash in a hurry?”

At 15:14. I got another phone call from Plantinum. The first thing that I got from the woman was a contact number: 086 711 1660

I asked to speak to her boss, but she said he was out. Funny that. When I asked to leave a message, I was hung up on.

The phone call didn’t last for very long… :-(

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Vodacon

Here’s a screenshot from the LG Chocolate website:

Screenshot from the LG Chocolate website

Anyone detect a Freudian slip?

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Athlon 64 Shortage

There seems to be a shortage of single core AMD Athlon 64 processors at the moment. All the suppliers blame it on AMD-ATI merger….

I finally found one at Sahara, and so signed up with them. (Yes, I know they have a bad reputation with returns, but all the suppliers have those). The message from my sales consultant contained 11 disclaimers. You’d think one would suffice, or maybe even zero (my personal favourite), but no, 11… I really enjoy the variations in formatting :-)

Enjoy your day.

Any enquiries contact me

XXX YYYY

Sales Consultant

XXXX@cpt.sahara.co.za

021 551 5595 /Ext. XXX

Fax: 0866077368

PLEASE NOTE This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Sahara Distribution (Pty) Ltd. Finally, while Sahara Distribution attempts to ensure that all email is virus-free, Sahara Distribution accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Sahara Distribution (PTY) Ltd Private Bag X180, Halfway House, 1685, South Africa Scanned and protected by MailScanner @ mail.cpt.sahara.co.za PLEASE NOTE This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Sahara Distribution (Pty) Ltd. Finally, while Sahara Distribution attempts to ensure that all email is virus-free, Sahara Distribution accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Sahara Distribution (PTY) Ltd Private Bag X180, Halfway House, 1685, South Africa Scanned and protected by MailScanner @ mail.cpt.sahara.co.za

PLEASE NOTE

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Sahara Distribution (Pty) Ltd. Finally, while Sahara Distribution attempts to ensure that all email is virus-free, Sahara Distribution accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.

Sahara Distribution (PTY) Ltd Private Bag X180, Halfway House, 1685, South Africa