Thursday, February 03, 2011
lunarpages.com thinks a phishing report is a "virus"
I've been receiving phish spam from a Lunarpages VPS ("lunariffic.com") this year. When I send a sample, included inline in a plain text email, their inbound email machine (sharpmail.lunarpages.com, 64.50.162.254) waits until the end of the DATA phase of the SMTP conversation. Then it says:
554 rejected due to virus
which means it's refusing the message. I opened a ticket in their abuse system. The technician insisted that since the message says "virus" there must actually be a computer virus in the message. I pointed out that the message was in plain text and contained nothing like any kind of malware, and he simply repeated the response. The spamming continued. I called tech support and they insisted that since I am not a customer they are not allowed to talk to me about it. But he suggested I try sending from another provider. I have not been able to identify any human being at Lunarpages who is allowed to talk to an email admin outside his own company. Somehow, I suspect if postmaster@yahoo.com calls, they'll talk to him. But maybe their lawyers have to arrange an appointment first.
I tried sending the spam report from my account at freeshell.org. Same result.
This dysfunction, folks, is why the email medium is dying.
Incidentally, the RFC 2142 addresses abuse@lunarpages.com and abuse@lunariffic.com are listed as not working, with evidence, at RFC-Ignorant.org. No surprise there, since they don't work. The abuse.net clearinghouse suggests you try hostmaster there.
which means it's refusing the message. I opened a ticket in their abuse system. The technician insisted that since the message says "virus" there must actually be a computer virus in the message. I pointed out that the message was in plain text and contained nothing like any kind of malware, and he simply repeated the response. The spamming continued. I called tech support and they insisted that since I am not a customer they are not allowed to talk to me about it. But he suggested I try sending from another provider. I have not been able to identify any human being at Lunarpages who is allowed to talk to an email admin outside his own company. Somehow, I suspect if postmaster@yahoo.com calls, they'll talk to him. But maybe their lawyers have to arrange an appointment first.
I tried sending the spam report from my account at freeshell.org. Same result.
This dysfunction, folks, is why the email medium is dying.
Incidentally, the RFC 2142 addresses abuse@lunarpages.com and abuse@lunariffic.com are listed as not working, with evidence, at RFC-Ignorant.org. No surprise there, since they don't work. The abuse.net clearinghouse suggests you try hostmaster there.
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I'm guessing they are using Clam Antivirus which does include some signatures catching phishing. They are being stupid. I'm doubtful as to whether they act meaningfully on abuse reports anyway- just look at all their SBL listings.
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