Every one that knows me well enough, or even not that well, knows that I have strong dislikeings towards microsoft. Well I can tell you that it didn’t get better today.
The company I am working for right now have customers that buy, among many other things, e-mail. An old and straight forward service that have worked after certain standards in well over twenty years.
A certain “overhead” have to be tolerated to keep services safe. Http had to become https, ftp evolved to sftp. Every year we have been forced to implement a new saftey layer to deal with the new exploits.
Ofcourse e-mail have not been left untouched by this. And spammers and spoofers have made their contribution to darwinize e-mail services. But all in all, we still are able to use e-mail as a every day service. Hell, companies even rely on it.
Rely on it?
Yes, rely on it… but wait, listen, you hear that? You hear how that make an echo?
I have a dozen of customers turning to me for help saying; We can’t e-mail @hotmail.com, @live.com or @msn.com. Sure, I have a coupple of cases with @gmail.com also. But guess who is leading the club? I’ll give you one shot… who?
Let’s say that you have a small company. Of course you don’t have your own IT departement, you don’t even have your own servers. Apart from your laptop, you buy all your IT as service from someone that knows how that stuff works. Someone like my company. Business is a struggle but all in all works out well in the end of the month.
Now the war against spammers hit you!
Overnight you are no longer able to e-mail 80% of your customers. No longer can you continue to answert to those e-mail relations representing good business and your reputation. Maybe you where cut off in the middle of a negotiation… you just dropped out.
Well, you, little company, must ofcourse understand that this is for your own safety, you must have your e-mail blocked because we have to fight cybercrime. Just like you have to accept to get underessed every time you fly or have your handbag searched every time that bomb dog sniffs on you or any authority representant says that his dog probably looked like it wanted to sniff on you. Obey! Because you don’t want your kids to be blown up do you? DO you???
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For two days now I have tried my hardest to get in contact with Mircosoft. What a joke!
And for two days now I have read the postings on support.microsoft.com, even a bigger joke! Never underestimate stupid people in large groups. Impervious!
You know what, I don’t hink I can revert those blacklistings, and you know what? I don’t think I am supposed to be able to revert them. You hear that echo again?
But what I DO think is, this is business. I think that this is the same foul business tactic selling insurance (you don’t want your kids to be hurt, do you?) or any other aid business pleading for charity. Look at those hungry kids, you want them to die?
Not that I don’t like charity, but when you dress up Global business in charity, i get sick!
Maybe this is a good moment for reflection.
What created this situation? How did they get their (or shoud I say your) money? How did they get so big and powerful? Are there alternatives? Does this imply other business segments too (local butcher – the mall)?
So maybe it’s time to contemplate and try to take som steps in the right directions?
Nah… I wasn’t me getting locked out this time……
Never underestimate fools in a pack.
