About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. I teach photographers web design and professional skills. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Its strong points include an introduction to Python, and better coverage of Django 1.0 than nearly anybody else. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 67593 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Trying to send eBay a message?

I've been getting unrequested messages from the eBay Developer Zone site over the last couple days about email address changes. I have a Developer Zone account, but I haven't touched it for months if not longer. I sent an e-mail to them about it, but haven't heard anything.

I just got yet another one of these and I think I see what's up. Check out the registered email address. Somebody found a hole.

(And in case you're wondering, no, this isn't some kind of phishing message. It's a text/plain message and the routing headers show it being received by my mail server directly from mxpool05.ebay.com.)

From: DevZonePassword@ebay.com
Subject: Forgot your Developer Zone username?
Date: May 26, 2006 10:45:12 AM EDT (CA)
To: hey.ebay@sql.inject.com'.or.''='
Cc: [OMITTED]

If you did not forget your username for the eBay Developers Program,
please ignore this email.

Your Username is: [OMITTED]
Your registered email address is:hey.ebay@sql.inject.com' or ''='

You can sign in to the Developer Zone at
http://developer.ebay.com/devprogram/sign_in.asp

If you have forgotten you password, you can request it at
http://developer.ebay.com/devprogram/ForgotPassword.asp

Thank you for being a member of the eBay Developers Program!
Sincerely,
Developer Relations

Friday, May 26th, 2006
ebay + risks + web development
3 comments

Some related posts: My first DOS • eBay, fraud, filtering, and Web 2.0 • The MySpace worm • Is eBay doing all it can to fight phishing?

• Comment from Paul , 9 months later

For some reason this post gets more spam comments -- by far -- than anything else on my blog. The spam comments almost never have anything to do with the content of the post; lately they're for prescription drugs.

I've become curious about the reasons for this. Any theories?

• Comment from Paul , 21 months later

I've deleted some irrelevant comments along the lines of "please help me with my eBay problem".

Sorry, but this is not an eBay help forum! I'm just a guy with a blog. If you are having an eBay problem that you can't resolve directly, try their [dispute resolution service][1].

[1]: http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/disputeres.html

• Comment from matt , 2 years later

Yeah I have no idea why personal blogs are spammed.

But google did point me here while searching for how to send a user a message...