Nekkid Ninjas

A little while ago I posted about I blogged about the anti-spam system that was being installed on Ninjahosting HQ. An eagle-eyed visitor spotted that it was Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP)server project.

Since that time ASSP has been installed and the server has been running effectively with a dozen or so live accounts.

Time for a quote:

...and no I am not making any oblique reference to Stian's magnificent Viking Helmet!

"Impalled on the Horns of a Dilemma" or similarly "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" are polite ways of describing the current development status of Ninja Hosting.

I'm posting here to give all those who are interested an explanation as to why Ninja Hosting is not yet live and to tell you a tale that is almost so incredible that it can't be true, sadly it is true, very true.

Ninja Hosting going live is stalled for the want of a simple licence / licence number.

If you want to know more then...

There are some people who would say that, as a server admin, I'm concerned with spam, and anti-spam measures to make my life easier because less spam means less hassle from clients... but I couldn't possibly comment

With my tongue firmly in my cheek I could suggest that was true but, at the end of the day, it's all about customer service - I loathe being swamped by spam as much as everyone and if there is something that I can do to try and reduce that for everyone on my servers. It's a win-win-win-win situation; my clients get less spam so I get less exasperated support tickets, I also see less spam in my own mailboxes so we should all be all-round happy bunnies

Ah, but there's more, and you're right it's not as simple as that...

First post from me, and it's a bit of everything, part hosting and part rant, with a chunk of general site design thrown in for good measure.

On the one hand I know from server admin-ing that spam is a nightmare - not only handling the incoming deluges of mail that sometimes come in, but also in terms of web page security. So, its not only your mailbox that is a target targets for spammers, the forms on your web site are too.

We've all probably come across those "CAPTCHA" images on a web or contact form that you have to copy the squiggly numbers to make sure you're human and not a spam-bot. Cutting edge eh, I mean we're safe aren't we, the CAPTCHA images are graphic pictures and spammers won't have the capability to get around them?

Yeah, well, I recently read this and thought "why am I not surprised":

Gone in 60 seconds: Spambot cracks Live Hotmail CAPTCHA