If you’re using Pyzor to help you block spam (a lot of people use it alongside SpamAssassin), then you’ve probably run into these nasty “pyzor: check failed: internal error” messages in your maillog since July 21st.
     After digging into on my own a bit, I found two things.  The first was the “InternalError” was being caused by a corrupt “servers” file that contained nothing but “File Not Found” information.  The second was that the “discover” command line was returning:

downloading servers from http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/inform-servers-0-3-x
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File “/usr/bin/pyzor”, line 4, in ?
    pyzor.client.run()
  File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyzor/client.py”, line 991, in run
    ExecCall().run()
  File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyzor/client.py”, line 185, in run
    self.servers  = self.get_servers(servers_fn)
  File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyzor/client.py”, line 410, in get_servers
    servers.read(open(servers_fn))
  File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyzor/client.py”, line 119, in read
    self.append(pyzor.Address.from_str(line))
  File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyzor/__init__.py”, line 458, in from_str
    fields[1] = int(fields[1])
IndexError: list index out of range 

     Obviously, linking to non-existent files, especially in the /cgi-bin/ directory, is a bad thing.

     As a temporary measure, simply disable your “pyzor discover” cron job, and manually add “82.94.255.100:24441″ into your “servers” file (wherever it may be with your configuration).

     There’s a stopper-style bug in the the latest Akismet plugin for Wordpress.  If you have multiple pages of Spam Comments, it keeps returning the first fifty — not good if you get as much Spam as we do, as we have to periodically check for false positives.
     The fix is easy…

     In Akismet 2.1.4, change wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php, line 483 from:

        $comments = akismet_spam_comments( $current_type );

     to

        $comments = akismet_spam_comments( $current_type, $page );

     And Enjoy. 

I have a sister who is a chronic email forwarder. You probably have a forwarder too. You get an email that is:

Subject: Fwd: Fw: FW: Something!

And all the text is crazy indented and screwed up and there are headers with a hundred email addresses you must work through.

Or, it is an attachment, of an attachment of an attachment of an email that is a dead link about 50% of the time.

I have blocked email from my sister. I hate that crap.

Now, I get it at my job. From the CEO no-less. I can’t decide if I should correct his emails or not. Here is the latest, with all the screwed up text fixed: 

NO GAS…On May 15th 2007
Body: Don’t pump gas on may 15th
Body: ..in April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices.  Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th 2007, all internet users are to not go to a gas station inprotest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members curren tly on the internet network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.

If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,292,000, 000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companies pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one day.

If you agree (which I cant see why you wouldn’t) resend this to all your contact list. With it saying, ”Don’t pump gas on May 15th”

And here is the easy to find website to put an end to it that no one ever seems to search for before they forward these things.

HOX0Rd

Please, before you forward another crazy ass statement or warning or other hot topic that was forwarded to you by some unknown source, go to Google and search for a bit of the text or the title and the word “hoax”.

     I just deleted 991 spam since last night at 9PM.  One from a spambot known only as RastaCamel, coming to us from an open proxy in Russia, ends its hundreds of nasty pr0n links with the following:

See later![b] With best wishes, RastaCamel [/b]

P.s.
[i]Please don`t delete this topic.. My kitten is very hungry and I must to work for buy to her Whiskas :(( Thanks![/i]

     Kitten-guilt to promote pr0n spam.  Wow.

     Considering the subject matter, it’s probably a good thing, then, that the last Kitten Guilt craze was debunked by The Good Reverend in 2005…

     However, this math may be flawed, considering that he didn’t account for the the fact that kittens have nine lives…

We get these surveys and we all put in canned one liner answers. And honestly, how many times do you have to answer the same question about what color your underwear are or how many times in the last 3 weeks someone else has slept in your bed?

No, I’m not on a high horse. I am one of the most guilty individuals that I know. If I am bored at work or have nothing to do and there is a survey sitting there in the bulletins, it’s like a train wreck. I have to look. And then, before I know it, I am committing a crime against all that is right in the world and tap, tap, tapping my keyboard, filling in the answers.

When will it start? Every single person who reads this has been attacked repeatedly. And if the attack were successful, our computer might be dead or our back accounts drained or our identities stolen. Sounds freakin serious to me.

I have a very good sys admin who keeps 99.9999+% of the spam and phishing scams from ever hitting my inbox. But some still comes through. And over 99% of the email traffic on the internet is spam. The work of compromised, infected computers. National Security? Hello.

My sys admin knows who they are. He blocks them and send the spam to the bit bucket. Why does he have to?

Wanna stop elderly folks and computer newbies from sending thousands of dollars to Nigeria? Stop with the free distribution of spam! It’s that easy.

We need to stop it all at the Internet backbone. If the engineers and computer scientists in charge of maintaining the Internet decide to implement it, they could stop 80-90+% of the spam immediately. Thus freeing up bandwidth for more porn commerce.

Every day it only gets worse as a new computer has a broadband connection to the Internet every half second and three days later 1 out of 100 of those is sending out 100,000 spam emails an hour. It will cripple the Internet. And no one is even thinking about it. No one but the sys admins fighting the war on their servers and the people like us fighting off one attack after another.

Not to mention the millions of dollars that is lost daily to the crap coming into our Tubes…

     This Spam Comment made my day.

     Coming straight out of a Russia from a spambot identified only as “paris:”

Outsoles are made of enduring compounds and are in a Queer Street needle of left over shoe existence….

     It’s brilliant.  It’s actually a sentence!

     The site, Little Democrats, has been spammed continually for the last week from Democratic organizations, Google AdSense and miscellaneous “do-gooders” who think that this Democrat-centric children’s book is a good idea.
     Unfortunately, it’s a load of crap.

     Just take a look at the sample pages … I mean, apparently, Republicans are a group of people who don’t share their toys, run over children and charge money to go to school.

     Regardless, from what I remember, the Government isn’t supposed to be a Parent to its citizens. It’s supposed to exist to represent them.

     So, of course, I couldn’t resist spoofing it…

It was strange and amusing when online casino, Golden Palace, started purchasing oddball artifacts — such as the Grilled Cheese with the image of the Virgin Mary, a Doritos chip in the shape of the Pope’s Hat and the so-called Holy Pierogo — to make a name for itself. The next round of advertising raised quite a few eyebrows: purchasing ad-space on peoples’ bodies and having people legally change their names to “goldenpalace.com.”

The excrement really hit the fan in April 2005 when they paid $15,100 to a Connecticut woman in exchange for her naming her baby, “goldenpalace.com.” In addition to proving that the mother was insanely cruel and idiotic, this kind of shock-value advertising also went to prove what a bunch of soulless bastards Richard Rowe and company really were.

Last year, they sponsored streaking and mayhem at public events, an embarrassment that even the Winter Olympics in Torino were not spared. Sponsored by Golden palace, an English streaker, Mark Roberts, interrupted the Bronze Medal curling competition on Friday the 24th. Even tonight, during the closing ceremonies, organizing committee chairman Valentino Castellani was interrupted by one of their punks who decided to grab a microphone. Mr. Castellani continued gracefully, ignoring him almost completely.

It’s very clear that Richard Rowe can’t run a respectable company, and their continued shock-value advertising keeps going unchecked. Their antics are not only disruptive, they’re illegal. Yet, they continue to be allowed to operate in this manner.

So what’s next for Dick & Co.? It’s obvious that they have absolutely no qualims about screwing up the lives of innocent children or down-on-thier luck mothers, or with sponsoring repeated public nudity and completely disrupting international events.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit for them to start sending t-shirts to suicide bombers.

This Spam is brought to you by every country in Europe, half of Africa, all of Asia, Oceania, South America and Comcast.net! But first, the mandatory reply:

From: “Mark”
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: GOOD DAY

Dear Mr. Jang: We have received your plea via e-mail, and respectfully request that you walk several miles north into the Demilitarized Zone screaming, “Kim Jong Suk Dong!” at the top of your lungs. We feel that this will be a fitting end to your plight.

A fitting reply to the latest twist on Nigerian E-Mail Scams…

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