My Instinct Was Wrong? Right!

well, probably not.

I have a VPS and run websites for several clients. I got an email this morning from one of my oldest clients asking why their email to one of their customers was being returned undelivered. Inspecting that email reveals this (names and IP addresses have been altered to protect the guilty)

clientname@client-company.net
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO::
host frontend2.client-company [123.456.789.0]:
550-Your message was rejected by this user and was not delivered.
550-Reason: This system uses BMS to check your IP address reputation, and was rejected by the user. IP=[987.654.321.0]
550-Protection provided by: MagicMail version 1.3.2 (http://magicmail.linuxmagic.com)
550-For more information, please visit the URL:
550-http://www.linuxmagic.com/power_of_ip_reputation.html
550-or contact your ISP or mail server operator.

MagicMail.LinuxMagic is mail server software that uses several “blacklists” to determine if mail should be allowed through.

Following the info given, I visited http://www.linuxmagic.com/power_of_ip_reputation.html which explains why they do what they do. On that page is a link to actually check your “IP reputation”.

Doing that showed me a list of 9 different “blacklists” – our IP is clean on all of them but one named MIPSpace.

Digging around, I quickly find that MIPSpace and LinuxMagic are related companies and I find that to be very unethical at best.

MIPSpace has a policy of either not responding to inquiries about why an IP is on their list, and/or flat out telling people that they can list anyone they decide meets their fluid criteria. According to one source, MIPSpace blocks “commercial email marketing” which according their definition includes monthly newsletters, monthly billing, etc.

So what we have here is a case of my client’s customer actually paid for this MagicMail product and pays for it to use the MIPSpace blacklist. I don’t know if those are one-time, monthly or annual fees.

I explained to my client that there was nothing I could do to resolve the situation. Her only choices are to email from a different email domain and hope it is not on the MIPSpace blacklist (or one of the others MagicMail uses), or to send it to an email domain that is not “protected” by MagicMail.

One last note that I find interesting – they block incoming mail, but still allow my client’s customer to email my client. So why does a company that decides to be so “hard core” about “commercial email marketing” choose NOT to block those IPs in both directions?

THE FINAL SOLUTION: My client called her customer who in turn gave her a “personal email address” that was not protected by MagicMail. Her note back to me said,

I got them to give a[sic] another email address…it was one of their personal address. I finally got the info to them. I told them what you said about the blacklist and whitelist. They said they would have their computer guy get it fixed… in the meantime they are going to set up an email account outside of their system for us to send [...] info to.

So, my client’s customer’s company (say that fast 5 times) is paying to use MagicMail from LinuxMagic and paying for a subscription to MIPSpace, and then circumventing their own decision to purchase and use such software.

My advice to anyone considering the use of MagicMail, LinuxMagic, or MIPSpace – please review the following links – or Google it yourself and be sure you want to pay those companies to block legitimate incoming mail.

• http://www.pdxtc.com/wpblog/spam-prevention/email-fascism-by-linux-magic-wizard-tower-technoservices/
• http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=909250

Problem: HP’s Solution Center software scans images or documents but will not save the scans anywhere. We tried to save the scans to many different locations to no avail.

Solution: This was a tough one. Many people have had (are having) this problem as evidenced by all the posts on HP’s own forums. Unfortunately, an easy solution was not readily found. It took me about 3 hours to finally get to the root of the problem.

The most common solution offered by HP employees posting on the forums was to download a “patch” file – the problem with that “patch” is that it apparently looks at the version number of the Solution Center Software and was written to work with version 13 or 13.1 – as of this writing, the latest version is 14. When running the “patch”, we immediately get a message that says something like “There is no software on your computer that we can patch, you do not need this patch”

This computer was recently updated from Vista 32 bit to Windoze 7 32 bit and at that time we lost the ability to check ink levels. The recommended solution was to update to the latest Solution Center Software from HP.

I think the main problem is that during that process, one file does not get updated – hpqxmlul.dll – I never checked things deep enough to determine if that file is flagged as read-only, or was in use and therefore couldn’t be updated.

You can find that file in the C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin folder – ours was dated May 2007 where most other files in that folder were dated in 2009.

The solution is one of the following – instead of letting the new software uninstall the old version – do that manually through the Add/Remove programs – and afterwards, be sure that the C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin folder is empty – I think you will find it is not.

If the above noted file “hpqxmlul.dll” is present, just delete it. Then download and install the latest full suite of the software.

If you have already installed the latest version – hopefully you saved the huge download file (~385MB) first. What we did was simply rename the above noted file from “hpqxmlul.dll” to “hpqxmlul.dll.old”

Next we extracted the huge download file to a folder – it tries to extract to a temp folder, so I just created a folder in the root of C:\ called “HP”, so I changed the extract destination to C:\HP. After the extraction completes, the installation software runs – just click EXIT to close it.

Now, browse through the extracted stuff in C:\HP – your looking for the above noted file “hpqxmlul.dll” – it’s hidden inside a file named “destinations.cab” which is in the following list of folders – setup | destinations.

Once you locate “destinations.cab”, double click to open the .cab file – inside that you will find “hpqxmlul.dll1″ – note there is a digit “1″ on the end of that file name. Right click on that file and extract it – I saved it to the desktop for easy locating. It extracts with the extra “1″ on the end of the filename.

Then copy that file into the C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin folder and rename it to “hpqxmlul.dll” without the extra “1″ digit on the end. You could just extract it directly to the C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin folder and then rename it.

Next I rebooted the computer – not sure if that was needed, but I did it to be sure. After the reboot, we were then able to scan images, documents using OCR and they were saved in the My Scans folder – just as it should be.

This problem seems to affect many different models of OfficeJet Pro All In One printers – I saw forum posts for 7550, 7680, 8500

I recently posted about the new “call blocker” that I built using an existing PC, an $8 modem, and some $25 software from Beiley Software.

After a few months with this idea in place, I just want to add how happy I am with the results. Beiley Software makes a program called Audio Caller ID – I think it’s original intended purpose was to announce incoming calls and it does that well.

What I use it for is to block calls from unwanted numbers, and Lord knows how many of those we all get.

One feature that I have grown particularly fond of is the ability to block numbers using wild card characters. In looking at my call logs, I notice lots of calls from some phone Spammers using a range of numbers like these actual entries

TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3126 11:01 AM : 3/25/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3127 3:53 PM : 3/24/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3125 3:42 PM : 3/23/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3126 7:13 PM : 3/21/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3125 2:22 PM : 3/19/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3124 11:39 AM : 3/18/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3127 11:20 AM : 3/16/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3127 9:08 AM : 3/12/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3124 9:30 AM : 3/10/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3126 12:02 PM : 3/9/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3126 12:02 PM : 3/9/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3125 1:25 PM : 3/3/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3125 1:25 PM : 3/3/2012
TOLL FREE CALL (855) 632-3127 4:14 PM : 2/29/2012

or

8178723314 (817) 872-3314 6:34 PM : 3/8/2012
8178723315 (817) 872-3315 6:04 PM : 3/5/2012
8178723316 (817) 872-3316 10:16 AM : 3/3/2012
8178723317 (817) 872-3317 6:53 PM : 2/29/2012
8178723372 (817) 872-3372 7:32 PM : 2/28/2012
8178723342 (817) 872-3342 5:29 PM : 2/27/2012
8178723348 (817) 872-3348 6:00 PM : 2/23/2012
8178723341 (817) 872-3341 5:05 PM : 2/8/2012

Once you see a pattern, you can use a wild card to block a range of numbers, so I made just two entries in the block calls setup screen of the Audio Caller ID software, that look like this

<any name> 85563231XX
<any name> 81787233XX

Those two entries will block any of the calls from the above numbers – plus some that they may or may not have tried to use yet.

There are a few things I wish the program would do for me – mostly because I am lazy I guess – like automatically block calls with invalid area codes or invalid numbers.

During the political season, we get a lot of calls from faked numbers like 000-000-0000, or say the 202-644-XXXX exchange which does not exist – 202 is the valid area code for Washington, D.C. but the 644 exchange is not valid within that area code.

Some common faked numbers would be easily blocked – like those with invalid area codes. They should be easy enough to handle without a lot of data. Exchanges within areas code change more often and would be harder to block without some major maintenance to the program data files and/or a lookup via some online resource.

All in all, I am very pleased with this setup – it takes some due diligence on my part to actually “block numbers” and I’m always one step behind the phone Spammers. But that fits with my protocol – I think everyone can call me once, but if they don’t leave a message, then I research the number on Google, and add it to my blocked call list.

The program is running on a PC that was always on (and used a lot) anyway – so having this program running in the system tray was not a big issue. The Audio Caller ID software from Beiley Software has made our lives much easier – no more empty/hang up messages cluttering our answering system, no more going through the caller ID data to see if someone we want to talk to called.

I recommend this approach to anyone who is tired of all the unwanted phone calls.