JetBlue: Password Encryption is for Suckers

By Scott • 2016-02-20 Rants

The Background The Missus and I flew to Florida a couple of days ago, and as usual we took JetBlue. The only eventful part of the flight was a pleasant arrival 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew had mentioned that the satellite TV was out of commission, and that all in-flight movies would be free for the duration. I thought that was a good way of handling the issue, and figured that was the end of that. However, the next day we both received emails from JetBlue stating that we’d been signed up for their Travel Bank, and that a $15 credit had been applied to both of our Banks in exchange for the inconvenience of the malfunctioning … Continue reading

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Integrating Bullhorn with Exchange 2003 Using Journaling and Forwarding

By Scott • 2014-08-26 Computers

Bullhorn vs. Exchange 2003 One of the companies for which I manage IT uses Bullhorn’s applicant tracking software for their recruitment workflow. That company also uses the now-ancient Exchange 2003 for their email. But, Bullhorn doesn’t officially support integration with Exchange 2003. What’s involved? First off, “integration” is a strong word. It implies that our servers will pass information back and forth and stay in some meaningfully synchronized state. That’s not the goal in this case. The integration simply consists of passing all emails that are sent and received by our recruiters to Bullhorn’s servers. Once Bullhorn receives the emails, they’re parsed and can be viewed in the Activity Center and/or under the contact record to which they apply (using … Continue reading

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Redundant email servers with soft-fail (450) vs. hard-fail (550)

By Scott • 2014-02-10 Computers

I manage a fairly large number of incoming mail exchangers, which are numerous both to handle large message volumes as well as to provide redundancy. In most cases, these mail servers are Postfix with MySQL providing virtual alias maps, transport maps, relay domains, and virtual alias domains. Unfortunately the Postfix+MySQL implementation isn’t always 100% great. On very rare occasions the Postfix instance may fail to communicate with the MySQL server, for any number of reasons. From the perspective of the sender’s MX, this usually results in a 550 status code (often given as “Relay access denied”). This is a hard-fail, in that it tells the upstream MX that the recipient they’re trying to reach is permanently unavailable. The upstream MX … Continue reading

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I propose a new approach to email reputation that allows the (legitimate) little guys to compete

By Scott • 2012-09-28 Computers

I have a problem… I administrate roughly fifteen domains that send email on a regular basis. Outbound email is handled by two corporate (and one personal) email servers running Zimbra and Exchange, as well as a couple of mail exchangers that handle automated email from web servers. I also don’t send spam. All automated emails include a clear unsubscribe link, which is a single-click mechanism resulting in an immediate blacklisting of the user’s email address. Automated emails also include the name and mailing address of the company from which they were sent, as per US federal law. Corporate and personal emails are used responsibly; In other words they are not used for blind solicitation nor for any other purposes … Continue reading

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