US Cable Support > Cox HSI > [CA] Cox blocking emails to Blizzard's Servers?

[CA] Cox blocking emails to Blizzard's Servers?

Are you getting a bounce message?

Can you post it?

this was the response i got back came from System Administrator said was undeliverable: they tell me from their supp page that Reporting Hacks, Cheats, Trojans, etc. send e-mail to hacks@blizzard.com

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: spoofing attempt on my account
Sent: 3/17/2011 3:34 PM

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

'hacks@blizzard.com' on 3/17/2011 3:35 PM
552 5.2.0 LNaS1g00i42fX0q03NadZa This message was undeliverable. This message has been found to be a potential spam message, and has therefore been blocked. Please visit »coxagainstspam.cox.net for more information.

reply to Dsm1995
Hmm, the unlawful interception and invasion of privacy to restrict legal and lawful use of the email service. Pretty sure there are a couple legal precedents pointing out that it's illegal for private entities acting as service providers to restrict any lawfully intended use of email services.

Like the above. It appears Cox detected it was spam, and decided it's their right to illegally block your email communications after intercepting them because they feel it falls under their administrative oversight to maintain their network. (The law disagrees.)

[Guess who's back? ]

Then sue them.... ill wait.

sue them and then thy will raise our hsi fees by 10$/m lol

reply to Napsterbater
Someone should bring a class-action against them.

reply to DrThodt
Your depiction seems like a bit of a stretch. Try forwarding the suspect messages as attachments if you think it's so very important that Blizzard gets the info.

You could also send them to Cox's spam bucket. Frankly, I have more confidence in an ISP to have the resources and influence to follow up on things like this than a game maker.

It's likely that the stuff came from a rooted box offshore and the culprits are onto their next unsuspecting host by now.

What appears to be stretched? As a customer he intended to send a legitimate, legal email within the ToS utilizing a service he has contracted and paid for. The service provider intercepted and prevented that email from being sent thus preventing his legal and rightful use of the service he paid for.

Just because people allow their bias to interfere with their opinion, they would rather belittle the situation and point out it's lack of importance in daily life. Substitute "Blizzard" with "IC3" who would more than likely receive similar email notices, and you run into a massive legal issue.

However the issue is still the same, the provider blocked a legitimate email message violating the ToS. The stretch may come from the privacy angle in regards to the Customer Privacy Agreement.

But I am curious to hear the reasoning behind why you feel it's a stretch if you want.

(I'm also curious to know if it goes through as an attachment)

Since he was forwarding the e-mail, The message contents were part of the body thus the spam system scored it as spam (it was spam at one point)

I doubt there is any legal issues, I'm sure you would have to prove intent on Cox's part, they don't intend to block legitimate message's but it happens not much you can do about it, blame the spammers for causing this.
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LOL, ok man. Whatever you say.

Just keep deflecting the fact that it IS blocking legal and legitimate use of a paid for service.

1. Does your automated service occasionally block legitimate use of service? Yes
2. Knowing that legitimate use may be prevented, did you knowingly deploy said automated service? Yes

Intent established.

reply to DrThodt
You're violating the Cox acceptable use policy by forwarding spam. They should terminate your account.

(Not serious, of course. Just using the same tone and extreme position to show how distorted and biased your version sounds from my end.)

If your intent is to stop the spammers by alerting someone who can track down and squash their rooted box, I'm suggesting alternatives. If all you're looking to do is stamp your feet and cry lawyer, I don't have much advice for you. Maturity comes later for some.

reply to DrThodt
Every spam system will have false positives, its a fact of life, They have 3 Options.

1. Not have any e-mail service.
2. Allow tons of spam trough,
3. Occasionally block an e-mail, that in this case has the same body as a real spam message.

Like I said sue them.. if you think the law is on your side.
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ASUS M4A79T Deluxe | AMD Phenom II x3 720 BE AM3 w/4 Cores @ 3.41Ghz(OC) | 4Gb DDR3 Memory @ 1600mhz | Sapphire ATI HD4870 1GB 800mhz/1000mhz(OC) | 2x500GB HDD's Raid 0 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Build 7600 (RTM) | Windstream DSL 12m (14.9m Sync)/766k

reply to No_Strings
Ahhh so that's what this is about. Stamping feet and crying lawyer?

Pointing out legal inconsistencies and more simply, stupid business practices. Is an eye opener and a wake up call more than some pathetic attempt for attention.

Be aware of your rights, and exercise them, especially as a customer.

However regarding the first part of your reply. I'm quite sure an "inexperienced" employee of Cox would regard a legitimate email which resembles spam as spam thereby violating the customer privacy agreement to even be aware of it's contents before an email administrator for a domain/network contacted them regarding electronic abuse originating from said customer.

There are proper legal practices already in place for situations like this.

The above customer should have never have had his time wasted to receive a bounce back error, and have to reply here and inquire. He sent a legitimate email, it should have simply worked.

That's my point, however I'm sorry if anyone sees anything more than that.

Wait do you think people read these e-mail and decide if its spam or not?

Tell you what if you can come up with or find an E-mail system that can handle millions of customers e-mails a day and Mark them 100% correctly without any mistakes, ill rethink my position.
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ASUS M4A79T Deluxe | AMD Phenom II x3 720 BE AM3 w/4 Cores @ 3.41Ghz(OC) | 4Gb DDR3 Memory @ 1600mhz | Sapphire ATI HD4870 1GB 800mhz/1000mhz(OC) | 2x500GB HDD's Raid 0 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Build 7600 (RTM) | Windstream DSL 12m (14.9m Sync)/766k

reply to DrThodt
No one is looking at your email and making a judgment that it's spam. Whatever flaws exist or don't in your "legal" argument, you keep referring to employees reading your mail. There's a hunk of software scanning headers and comparing them against known signatures. No content is examined or revealed in the process.

reply to Napsterbater
Right, people are too lazy to complain about the emails they receive. So the few who 'stamp their feet' create grievances for users attempting legitimate use, where otherwise there more than likely would be none.

It should be up to the receiving customer to opt-in to spam filtration to automate their laziness, thus having the receiving network originate rejection and issue a complaint. While allowing intelligent users to maintain uninterrupted, legitimate use of sending emails to whomever they wish within the law and ToS, and receiving emails directed exclusively at them.

It's really simple.

reply to No_Strings
I'm well aware the process is automated, and no employee reads the emails within the current process of spam filtration. That's why I made no explicit statement regarding it. But sorry if I was unclear. The point is that they do knowingly block legitimate email, because they are aware it is blocked through the automated process.

So I attempted to clarify that in order to avoid privacy breaches and still maintain control, you need to have the recipient of the email file a complaint with their network, or opt-in to have the receiving network auto-flag and deny it per the customers wishes.

Blocking it on the outgoing end autonomously, thus circumventing the customers legitimate intentions is where these issues arise.

reply to DrThodt
Arguing with posters here will do no good aside from providing entertainment to folks who think this is a funny topic. If you are unhappy with the outgoing filtering you need to contact Cox and escalate your problem to a level it is solved or you are told to live with it or move your service elsewhere.

From personal experience I can tell you that Cox has little interest in fixing the outgoing blocking issue and sending several hundred messages to the unblock request address will exercise your fingers but not make a bit of difference in your outgoing blocking problem.

There are a couple solutions. I added a spam-buster type signature to my outgoing mail that uses the Cox server, about 100 words from my local Bayesian filter's good cache, that works for sending a bare URL or picture. The spam-buster won't work for trying to forward spam. Cox seems happy to block any SpamCop.net reporting I attempt to do as an example.

For forwarding that type of message your choice is simple, either don't do it or get access to a working SMTP server. I have one on my personal domain that works and I have helped several folks set their systems up to use the Gmail SMTP server for sending mail. I highly recommend the Gmail offering as it is as close to perfect as I've come across, free and easy to set up.