Even if you’re not a programmer, take a look at the following lines of code:
public function sendCommunication($oCommunication) { if (self::emailMode != EMAIL_TEST_MODE_NONE) { if (self::emailMode == EMAIL_TEST_MODE_LOGGED_IN_ONLY) { // DO NOT COMMENT OUT THE FOLLOWING LINES // EVER // FOR ANY REASON // INSTEAD CHECK THE TEST MODE AND SET THE ADDRESS FIELDS ACCORDINGLY $oCommunication->to = $oCommunication->from; $oCommunication->cc = ''; } |
Now, I ask you, even if you’re not a programmer, you know there’s one thing you would never, ever, do to the above code. Right? Now let’s say you are a programmer, a professional, being paid because of your ability to find solutions to problems and express them in an abstract language.
Now further imagine that changing the above code can lead to the customers of the people paying for this work getting spammed with confusing emails with our client’s name on them.
Yeah, you guessed it.
I now need to add: “Making a copy of the code without the warnings and removing the lines in that version is also not acceptable.”
One of those customers wouldn’t happen to be City Year, would it? That would explain some of the strange things appearing in my inbox.
No, your bizarre spam can’t be pinned on us!
It’s possible a computer at City Year or their email host has been hit by a virus. I think a new one was going around recently.
Meanwhile I’m just waiting to see what creative way my coworker finds to disable the ‘safety’ on our project next.
so what kind of stuff have you been getting from City Year?
Even though I had myself removed from City Year’s mailing list a long time ago, every so often, I get a big pile (50 or 60 a day for two to three days) of “message undeliverable” messages about something that City Year supposedly sent out (but these messages claim to be from City Year, not from the ISPs of the undeliverable addresses). When I’m getting my email over a dial-up connection, it costs me about 20 minutes a day just to delete them all. My spam filter doesn’t stop them, even though I now have City Year blacklisted.
What is probably happening exposes a fundamental flaw in the way email works. Someone – really hard to tell who – is using your email address as the ‘from’ address in their spam mailings. You get a notification for a bunch of the invalid email addresses on their list. The email system as it currently stands has no authentication of the sender.