Skip to main content

Say everything, blogs are everywhere

Our title is itself a book's and the first sentence, see that after the comma, is in its front flap by journalist Scott Rosenberg. Let's take some more words from it and share here. Blogging brought the Web's native character into focus---convivial, expressive, democratic. Bloggers have become the curators of our collective experience, testing out their ideas in front of a crowd and linking people in ways that broadcasts can't match. Blogs have created a new kind of public sphere--one in which we can think out loud together. The preceding paragraph is all in the book flap, front and back. It is the simplest answer if somebody is asking what a blog is, then and now. Although we see that as the magnanimous purpose of a blog which is really enticing and challenging. It adds choices and rooms for both sources and audiences without the regular prescriptive cadence.  What's common is the responsibility. Whether or not we do it via blog, print and online news, and whoever ...

Philippine telcos blocking entire SMS text with internet addresses in it

If you are sending SMS texts to your friends, family or colleagues and they contain internet or web address including IP and email addresses, and even a period or dot separating, regardless of, your words and numbers, they are automatically blocked and not going to be received by your waiting recipient. Cooler heads must prevail here especially if an important message is urgently being expected.

IP version 6 address is fine. However, an IPv4 including localhost address (given automatically to every computers and network interfaces as their own alone designed for troubleshooting purposes), and your money in the billion figure using dot as separators would be blocked. 

If you send "local.business, naman.naman etcetera" or any words that made you use dot in between them, as part of the text, they will be blocked. There are some, that isn't blocked in this category. Like check.iclassed, some.ent, whatever.local etcetera, that is because they do not form any domain name at all. Unlike artificial.intelligence, the first two (in) or three (int) after the dot which are India's and international organization's top level domains, respectively, most probably are being parsed as that by their blocking system. 

More so on legitimate top level domains in which there are now hundreds of these identified as generic and country code top level domains and domain hacks as well.

Any web address, even if its legitimate, including government and business domain names, if you send them as part of your SMS text, they will be blocked. Your entire text are not delivered at all and there's nothing that will be received on the other end.

The same thing for numbers with dot in between including IP (192.168.1.1) and email ([email protected]) addresses. 

But we are still receiving scam texts. Right? That's because in those texts, they don't use dot anymore. They are now using semicolon or comma or dot-using the whole word.

If you send "local,business" or any other message you have to with that format, it will get through, and so with the use of said other very simple schemes.

With the parameters being blocked as mentioned above, we tried to send some SMS texts with setting as the following

  • From/to Smart, both numbers are from Smart, the SMS texts were going through. All SMS sent through Smart and within its own network passes through, except for some texts that is lost, which is not received, for whatever reason, but probably not necessarily due to blocking of scam SMS texts. This issue seems to occur to all networks.
  • From/to Globe, both numbers are from Globe, the SMS texts were not going through. Even sending .com and other top level domains i.e. .net, .org alone as the only content of SMS texts, they do not go through. When a Globe subscriber send an SMS which contains link or domain name to another Globe number, same thing happened, it would not pass through. Globe, however, can send these links and domain names to its subscribers as we can see when we are getting SMS from them via their multiple channels or the 4-digit numbers that they mostly use for some of their services. 
  • From Smart to Globe and from Globe to Smart, SMS texts were not going through. It could be one network is totally doing the blocking. 

Networks not identified here were not part of the test or incidental activity, we should say. If you've got some extra load you can try these with other mobile number of yours or colleagues'.

Comments

Jon S said…
Problem, problem. All of this can be avoided when customers' businesses/activitise are factored in everytime. AWS sends URI for some of my account's authentication and I wouldn't received it.

Those who made such decisions are not sensitive to people's business, in PH this is sadly just the truth. They are only after their own profit, grow and ignore concerns of subscribers.

Looks like human errors are increasingly getting in the way of technology's job. iclassed has taught me well, try it's sorbefacient tutorial, and I completely understood why problems are becoming a norm in every technology effort. There is a solution to this, only that there are so many wrong people in those kind of position.
Jon S. said…
Human error? Read https://www.reuters.com/world/us/airlines-expect-us-operations-rebound-thursday-faa-investigates-outage-2023-01-12/
K said…
You never have to think twice again https://www.iclassed.com/p/zero-hour-covid-time-like-or-distressed.html.
Anonymous said…
The participation of affected people (based on my own experience, it's everyone) are not so much of a news, both in the web and mass media. Like there is nothing at all to say about. But this is a start, I like the practicality of the ideas here and there.

Suzuki-san
Unknown said…
Relevant discussions threading subjects significant to big picture, consultants working indeed. Any other company in PH doing such as this? Appreciate your reply, I am trying to source a new team (previous teams came from the so-called Big 4 and couldn't even formulate a simple strategy, so shortsighted) for a project.

Popular posts from this blog

How to save from Microsoft 365 or Teams and learn the basics of the solution from our first license and transaction

 Subscription and license fees for cloud services is not always appealing to small businesses. For big businesses, we are on a spending spree because we simply can, even if a license if not being used purposely and productively. With small businesses, no matter the need for Microsoft 365, we won't even try it. We did try but stopped and never subscribed back again. We consider the cost to be very high not just because of the service or product's license cost only. If accumulated for years compared to simply buying physical media, which is still the best bet. This, however, is going away. For some markets, it is not available anymore. How can a business get Microsoft 365 without breaking the planned budget allocation just for this service? There are options available from Microsoft 365 website. Pick the business, not family, personal or enterprise, which we may want to consider as well. With the cost the only consideration, any of this may not be a good choice. But then some fea...

Jobs we observed in a system performance

They are made either any of the following- - Tech job, - Business job, - Nut job, or - Enterprise job. What's yours? Can you do it better from your existing drive? Whatever you do, your output should facilitate not just your organization's goal but a little more than what you originally planned. Leaders usually kept them in the mind, so subtle only them knows it, but with some useful and delicate strategies employed people really are doing a good job, and working to improve them, too. That's the beginning why corporate social responsibility, or even the consequential environmental, social and governance initiatives can be a potent move to do something, if pertinent or weighty is even the right word. That doesn't need an ostentatious resources but the effect is meaningful for stakeholders, everyone we meant.