July 29, 2003
The other night I emailed an HTML file to myself at work, but the message never arrived. At first I thought that we were blocking HTML mail, but other HTML mail was slipping past, so I set about analyzing the headers to see what the difference could be. That wasn't the problem, as it turns out, so in a way I'm glad that my efforts were fruitless.
The file contained dummy "Lorem Ipsum" text generated at lipsum.com (a site worth bookmarking). This line was triggering the spam filters: "Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus." Cum was the offending word, and my mentioning it here will probably get this site blocked by filters in public libraries and schools. So watch the Latin, folks.
Of course, explaining that this was just Latin text used as filler has done nothing to discourage my coworkers' notion that I'm an overeducated freak. Sigh.
