FortKnox's Journal: Slashdot Unintentionally Spams Users

Slashdot has accidentally sent some of its messaging through email creating unintentional spam into some users inboxes. It looks like it may have been an overnight glitch that was quickly fixed, but multiple people have claimed to have the same issue. Perhaps its time that the slashcrew creates automated regression testing and other cost-effective testing ideas into their process. Only stable releases should get pushed into the 'production' environment.

Yes, I did submit this. Yes, I assume it will be rejected.
Update: It was rejected by the time I wrote this JE.

Lets fight back. Make them talk about it! Put this in your sig:

<BR>--<BR>Did you get <A HREF="/~FortKnox/journal/23968">messages (with ads) in your email from slashdot</A> (aka spam)?

Nothing like avoiding obvious questions

[sielwolf]

when a simple topic could solve it. Just a header saying "/. last night may have accidentally blah blah blah".

What an interesting choice to ignore questions and try to quickly fix something in the hope users will quickly forget such a failure. Nice. This is borderline managerial incompotence.

ads in mails...

[Make]

since yesterday, /. also includes advertisement in the notify emails. Most of those were caught by Spamassassin at my mailserver. They're killing journal discussions by this, aren't they?

Of course it was rejected

[DaytonCIM]

Why would /. post a negative story about it self?

Seriously, the editors are not neutral, nor are they very open-minded. They all have distinct personalities and individual interests that translate into an (unintentional for the most part) agenda.

None of the editors will step up and post a story that points out a mistake about the company that sends them a bi-weekly check. Of course they have absolutely no problem posting stories slamming the evil empire (i.e. Micorsoft) or praising the good and holy kingdom of Linux. :)

Re:Of course it was rejected

[FortKnox]

Its more along the lines of "Yeah, we had a quick problem but fixed it"

If you don't do that, you get conspiracy theories and pissed off readers. It isn't a matter of making themselves look bad as much as telling everyone it was fixed.

Re:Of course it was rejected

[DaytonCIM]

You're right. Also, I thought it and with the current /. crowd we have, that story would be flooded with trolls in a matter of minutes.

I understand now why not to post that story. Oh well, I over-reacted... again. :)

Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[dthable]

When I checked my email this morning, I thought it was another new feature they added to make things run slower. I spent an hour looking for a preference to turn it off. In the end I just trained Mail.app to move that crap into the Trash.

Speaking of regression testing, is there an automated testing framework for Perl/CGI apps? We've got something here at work written in Perl and uses the same test-in-production model that /. uses.

Re:Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[FortKnox]

hey, do you still have those messages? Pudge wants the timestamp on the message header, and my mail is sitting at home (if I didn't delete it this morning)

Re:Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[slothdog]

Here's mine:

Received: from sc8-slashdot-nfs.slashdot.org ([10.2.150.1] helo=localhost)
by sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian))
id 18jBYo-00056s-00
for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:22 -0800

Re:Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[dthable]

Here's the header from one of the messages. Those that got trapped by the spam filter are gone forever.

Return-Path:
Received: from smtpin01-en2.mac.com ([10.13.10.146]) by ms01.mac.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15) with ESMTP id HA8E5E00.OBO for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:38 -0800
Received: from batch3.csd.uwm.edu (batch3.csd.uwm.edu [129.89.7.226]) by smtpin01-en2.mac.com (Xserve/MantshX 2.0) with ESMTP id h1D55bpb027968 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:37 -0800 (PST)
Received: from alpha1.csd.uwm.edu ([e-mail] [129.89.7.201] (may be forged)) by batch3.csd.uwm.edu (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h1D55aZ1013890 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:05:36 -0600 (CST)
Received: from batch3.csd.uwm.edu (batch3.csd.uwm.edu [129.89.169.226]) by alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h1D55aLc014275 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:05:36 -0600 (CST)
Received: from sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com (mail.osdn.com [66.35.250.105]) by batch3.csd.uwm.edu (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h1D55aZ1019157 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:05:36 -0600 (CST)
Received: from sc8-slashdot-nfs.slashdot.org ([10.2.150.1] helo=localhost) by sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18jBYw-00058U-00 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:30 -0800
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 05:05 +0000
Subject: [Slashdot] New Journal Entry by jeffy124, "short unix question..."
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Message-Id:

Re:Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[glh]

Heh, I just checked my yahoo mail and had a couple in there. Here's the headers:

#1
X-Apparently-To: [e-mail] via 66.218.78.141; 12 Feb 2003 21:05:38 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: from 66.35.250.105 (EHLO sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com) (66.35.250.105) by mta112.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 12 Feb 2003 21:05:38 -0800 (PST)
Received: from sc8-slashdot-nfs.slashdot.org ([10.2.150.1] helo=localhost) by sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18jBYs-00057n-00 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:26 -0800
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 05:05 +0000
Subject: [Slashdot] New Journal Entry by jeffy124, "short unix question..."
From: [e-mail] | This is Spam | Add to Address Book
To: [e-mail]
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Message-Id:
Content-Length: 526

#2
X-Apparently-To: [e-mail] via 66.218.78.145; 12 Feb 2003 21:13:05 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: from 66.35.250.105 (EHLO sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com) (66.35.250.105) by mta193.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 12 Feb 2003 21:13:05 -0800 (PST)
Received: from sc8-slashdot-nfs.slashdot.org ([10.2.150.1] helo=localhost) by sc8-osdn-mail.osdn.com with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18jBYl-00056A-00 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:05:19 -0800
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 05:05 +0000
Subject: [Slashdot] New Journal Entry by Chacham, "What is the strangest/significant book that you own or saw?"
From: [e-mail] | This is Spam | Add to Address Book
To: [e-mail]
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Message-Id:
Content-Length: 542

Re:Not A Bug...It's A Feature

[chromatic]

is there an automated testing framework for Perl/CGI apps?

A combination of WWW::Mechanize [cpan.org] and Test::More [cpan.org] should do the trick.