endx7's Journal: open proxy fools

Slashdot checks to see if you are using an open proxy when you try to post, and I fooled it into thinking I was running an open proxy (without knowing what I was doing at the time).

I've sent an email to CowboyNeal (when you post a comment, it says to email any problems to him). The contents of it follow (word wrapped and some slight x-ing out):

From: Robin Schoonover <end@hidden>
To: pater@hidden
Subject: open proxy issue
Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 11:03:36 -0600
X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.10claws (GTK+ 1.2.10386-portbld-freebsd5.2.1)

"Sorry, but according to our tests, you are trying to post from an open HTTP proxy. Please close the proxy or ask your sysadmin or ISP to do so, because open proxies are used to spam web boards like this one.

If you have questions, mention that your proxy is at xx.xx.xx.205"

Actually, there never was a proxy (and now I've made it so it won't even appear to be a proxy), and I can tell that the (one?) test is to see if it can retrieve http://(something).slashdot.org/ok.txt

I saw slashdot ask for this, wondered why, noticed that apache was getting the impression -it- was slashdot.org, and was looking for ok.txt locally. So I created ok.txt, to see what slashdot would do next.

You could say I found out.

"Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal."

So, here I am. I've rm'd ok.txt, but slashdot still thinks I'm an open proxy. Could you (or someone else) please clue your open proxy scanner in and remove my ip (xx.xx.xx.205)?

--
Robin Schoonover (aka End)
# Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson) "The surest sign that
# intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has
# never tried to contact us."

Haven't gotten an answer yet, and I still can't post either. Interestingly enough, I appear to be able to post entries to my journal.

UPDATE at May 9 11:59:13 MDT 2004: According to CowboyNeal, the proxy scanner cache expires every 48 hours. I should be able to post again soonish.