Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them

Facebook Says It's Filtering Comments For Spam, Not Censoring Them: bhagwad writes "Apparently Robert Scoble tried to post a long comment on Facebook only to have a message pop up saying 'This comment seems irrelevant or inappropriate and can't be posted. To avoid having your comments blocked, please make sure they contribute to the post in a positive way.' If true, this is huge. For one the self-moderating system of comments has always been the rule so far. And with countries like India rooting for the pre-screening of content and comments, is Facebook thinking of caving into these demands?" Facebook says there's a more innocuous explanation: namely, that the comment triggered a spam filter.

Verify Email with Telnet

Stolen from: http://www.webdigi.co.uk/

We have all been doing email address validation for a very long time to make sure that the email is correctly formatted. This is to avoid users entering wrongly formatted email address but still they can accidentally give us a wrong email address.

Example of a correctly formatted email address but still wrong:
mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com [VALID email format but it does not exist]

Above case specifically happens when you take important customer email on phone and you type in the wrong email. So is there a QUICK solution to really check the email without sending a test message to the user? Yes.

The solution
A quick & simple check below can be implemented in most programming language including PHP, Python etc. It relies on using the same SMTP which is used to send emails.
To check if user entered email mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com really exists go through the following in command prompt.

First - Find mail exchanger of reddit.com
COMMAND:
nslookup – q=mx reddit.com
RESPONSE:
reddit.com      MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.reddit.com
mail.reddit.com internet address = 208.96.53.70

Second - Connect to mail server mail.reddit.com
COMMAND:
telnet mail.reddit.com 25
RESPONSE:
220 mail.reddit.com ESMTP Postfix NO UCE NO UEMA  C=US L=CA Unsolicated electronic mail advertisements strictly prohibited, subject to fine under CA law CBPC 17538.45.  This electronic mail service provider’s equipment is located in the State of California.  See http://www.reddit.com/static/inbound-email-policy.html for more information.
COMMAND:
helo hi
RESPONSE:
250 mail.reddit.com
COMMAND:
mail from: <youremail@gmail.com>
RESPONSE:
250 2.1.0 Ok
COMMAND:
rcpt to: <mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com>
RESPONSE:
550 5.1.1 <mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table
COMMAND:
quit
RESPONSE:
221 2.0.0 Bye

NOTES:
1) the 550 response indicates that the email address is not valid and you have caught a valid but wrong email address. This code can be on the server and called on AJAX when user tabs out of the email field.  The entire check will take less than 2 seconds to run and you can make sure that the email is correct.
2) If email was present the server will respond with a 250 instead of 550
3) There are certain servers with a CATCH ALL email and this means all email address are accepted as valid on their servers (RARE but some servers do have this setting).
4) Please do not use this method to continuously to check for availability of gmail / yahoo / msn accounts etc as this may cause your IP to be added to a blacklist.
5) This is to supplement the standard email address javascript validation.

Host File Kung Fu

MVPS Custom Host File Instructions

I've been using a custom host file on my workstation for quite a while now. It works really well in blocking all sorts of undesired activity. Of course I only have 3 lines to block specific advertising sites but the potential is endless. Such a small change to my local configuration makes such a huge difference in all aspects of online activity.

If you are familiar with the NoScript or AdBlock plugins for Firefox then you are familiar with the concept of blocking certain domains, URLs or DNS names. Your host file is just an extension of how this works. Only instead of doing it at the application level, it does it at the operating system level.

Any time your machine tries to access a resource on the network, it has to translate that network address from a name to a number. If that process doesn't work (or is told to look in the wrong place) the resource isn't found. If that process is a looking for an advertisement or a nasty script, then that resource fails to load. When that resource fails to load it frees up resources on your machine to load more important stuff, like that article on how to winterize your lawn. Your host file just tells your machine to look in the wrong places for specific resources since any resource at this specific location is known to be undesired.

I use Open DNS at home to block a lot of these sites but this doesn't help when you leave the safety and comfort of your home network.

There are multiple sites out there that help with custom host files but MVPS is one of the best. Please take a look and see what they have to offer.

Scholarship FAIL

Got this spam the other day. Uh, maybe we won't be sending him any money.

Subject: I WONT TO WINE THIS SCHOLARSHIP

   My name is Surafel Ashenafi.i am student of Addis Ababa  university

faculity of technology in the department of chemical engineering.But this

department is not my interist.I wont to study mechnical engineering  if i

get a chance.

   I wont to know what is  your criteria for this opportunity?

   THNK YOU !!