WTF Epson



  • I started having trouble with my printer, and since it is somewhat specialized -- I use it exclusively for printing directly onto CDs and DVDs -- I decided to email Epson technical support rather than just immediately rushing out to buy a new one.  I wasn't terribly optimistic that they would be able to help me, but, what the heck.  Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll say "you just need to replace the Print Cromulizer.  You can order one from us."   So I submit a support request and give them a Gmail address I have.  I'll call this Gmail #1.

    The next day I get an email asking for more details: "Please reply to this email with answers to each of the questions above, it is important that you answer all (if possible) - as it will greatly  help us to provide you the most accurate resolution."   OK.  So far, so good.   So I reply to the email with detailed answers to all ltheir questions.

    A couple of hours later, I get an email which says "Your recent incident update was sent from an email address not associated with the incident. In an effort to maintain the security of information, we cannot update the incident using this email address."   I then noticed that this email was sent to a different email address -- ie, not the address I gave them when I  submitted the support request.  I'll call that Gmail #2.  Thinking that I must have screwed up, I re-sent my followup email making sure that it was sent from the Gmail #1 address.

     A couple of hours later I get an email, again sent to Gmail #2, which says "Your recent incident update was sent from an email address not associated with the incident. In an effort to maintain the security of information, we cannot update the incident using this email address." 

    WTF?   So I re-send the email, this time sending it from Gmail #2.  A couple of hours later I get the same email, again sent to Gmail #2, "Your recent incident update was sent from an email address not associated with the incident. In an effort to maintain the security of information, we cannot update the incident using this email address."

     



  • What does your gmail look like when you send an email from it? I know at one point, the word "gmail" was under dispute, so they started using "googlemail.com" addresses instead - however sending email to username@gmail.com still worked. So although you get the email at username@gmail.com, you're sending it from username@googlemail.com.

     

    Go into your gmail options and choose the "Use @gmail.com address as default" or some other similar option.

     

    Edit:

    Actually, upon further reading, have you got a different "Reply to" or "Sent from" address in your gmail settings?



  •  Somehow I associate Epson with matrix printers in the 90's. Didn't even know they still existed.



  • @renewest said:

     Somehow I associate Epson with matrix printers in the 90's. Didn't even know they still existed.


    Yup, they still make matrix printers (there are use cases for that, still).



  •  So you use an epson matrix printer to press your own CD? That's so geeky :)



  • GMail adds a "Sender:" field to the header of all outgoing e-mails showing the exact source of the message. This is the e-mail address that you are signed into when you sent the message, NOT the "From:" field. If you have several e-mail addresses that are aggredated under one GMail account you will find that you are often sending e-mails with "Sender:" and "From:" different. I suspect that you are logged in as GMail #2 and sending with "From:" set to GMail #1



  • @GettinSadda said:

    GMail adds a "Sender:" field to the header of all outgoing e-mails showing the exact source of the message. This is the e-mail address that you are signed into when you sent the message, NOT the "From:" field. If you have several e-mail addresses that are aggredated under one GMail account you will find that you are often sending e-mails with "Sender:" and "From:" different. I suspect that you are logged in as GMail #2 and sending with "From:" set to GMail #1

     

    Doesn't that pretty much defeat the purpose of multiple email addresses right on it's face?

     



  • @GettinSadda said:

    I suspect that you are logged in as GMail #2 and sending with "From:" set to GMail #1
    Uh....no.  To keep my original post short and hopefully not too confusing, I left out some of the details about the email accounts.  I do not send or receive mail using Gmail's web interface.  I only connect via POP3 from the email client on my PC.  I am never "logged in" to Gmail.



  •  I would label this a wtf, except I know gmail can cock up automated systems which expect a reply from the same address.

     

    Send an email to yourself, from the client you are using. What email address do you see?



  • @Marine said:

    I would label this a wtf, except I know gmail can cock up automated systems which expect a reply from the same address.

     Send an email to yourself, from the client you are using. What email address do you see?

     

    Sent email from Gmail#1 to Gmail#2.  Looked at haeders.  Everything is correct ("From", Reply To",  etc).

    Oh well.  I wasn't expecting much help, but I didn't expect to get stuck at the first email   Maybe if I get desperate enough I'll call them.

     

     



  • @El_Heffe said:



    @Marine said:
    I would label this a wtf, except I know gmail can cock up automated systems which expect a reply from the same address.

     Send an email to yourself, from the client you are using. What email address do you see?


    Sent email from Gmail#1 to Gmail#2.  Looked at haeders.  Everything is correct ("From", Reply To",  etc).

    Oh well.  I wasn't expecting much help, but I didn't expect to get stuck at the first email   Maybe if I get desperate enough I'll call them.

     

     



     

    But you KNOW what will happen, right? "You are calling from a phone number not associated with this incident. In an effort to piss you off maintain the security of information, we cannot discuss the incident using this phone call."

     FTFM.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @GettinSadda said:

    I suspect that you are logged in as GMail #2 and sending with "From:" set to GMail #1
    Uh....no.  To keep my original post short and hopefully not too confusing, I left out some of the details about the email accounts.  I do not send or receive mail using Gmail's web interface.  I only connect via POP3 from the email client on my PC.  I am never "logged in" to Gmail.

    If you use POP3, you do log in to GMail - part of the POP protocol is the sending of username and password at the start of a session.

    Also, if you send via a different server, there may be other problems such as Epson checking the details of the sending server (even checking the reverse DNS to see if it matches the sending domain).

    I wonder if the person that implemented the system was a recent graduate with a thesis about web security.

    A number of years back I spent ages fixing a complex device that formed part of a television studio infrastructure. Thissystem had several boards in a rack and they talked to each other via a 'simple' network. The person that coded this system was a recent graduate and so he built a complete network stack to run this inter-board communication system. This ended up being the cause of the failures (it even took a very major live programme of-air for a while!) What happened is that a mistake in the datasheet for one part of the comms system caused circuits based on the flawed data to have an instability that occasionally caused packets to become corrupted. If the corruption happened in the address field, the internal network would attempt to route the packets to the new address. As the internal network was 'fully-featured' this meant that the internal packets contained the machine's address as well as the board address and port, so a corrupted machine address would cause the packet to be sent to the main control board (the one with the external network interface) and then forwarded on to the machine with the new address. This was pretty bad as it would cause the wrong machine to have its settings change - but even worse was if the machine address ended up as "0". This was the "broadcast" address. When this happened, every machine on the network would receive the packet, but rather than this causing every machine on the network to change to the new setting, it caused ever machine on the network to inspect the packet and try and determine what to do with it. And what do you do with a broadcast packet? You broadcast it! So the second broadcast wave includes a broadcast message from every machine on the network.Then it just grows exponentially until the network is swamped and all the machines fall over and reboot. All that was required was a method for each control board to receve signals from a controller and set one of about 6 integer parameters on sub-boards. The sub-boards should never have needed to talk to the outside world, and the outside world should never have needed to talk to the internal boards. Also, machines never had any need to talk to each other, just the controller. Broadcast packets were also never intended to be a part of the system. The lesson that the original coder should have learned (though he left when it became apparent he didn't know how to fix it) was that just because you know how to do it, doesn't mean you should!

     


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