IT Obfuscation

device cals vs user cals

5 User Cals: 5 users (i.e. alice, bob, accounting, office, shipping) These 5 users can connect from any computer in the office, but it must be those users.

5 Computer Cals: (they call this device cals, but computer cals is more intuitive. it's a bit of obfuscation.) There are 5 computers (Workstation1, WS2, WS3, WS4, WS5) and any amount of user accounts can connect to the server, but they must be on one of these five computers.

The simple act of calling it device cals vs computer cals. Subtle changes make a big difference. Is there even a difference between a device and a computer? Yes. Not all devices are computers, but all computers are devices. Unless I can assign a CAL to my toaster. That is an appliance aka a device. My power drill is a device. Heck, a device can be nearly anything:

device definition (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/device): 1. an object or machine that has been invented for a particular purpose: 2. a machine

A hammer is an object invented with a particular purpose. Therefore, I would like to assign a CAL to my hammer.

Change the term device to computer, and it makes just a little bit more sense. But making sense was not the goal. Sales was the goal. Obfuscation was the tool used to achieve that goal. They don't want business owners to understand what is going on. The key to being successful in ruthless business, is to have an uneducated customer. The less informed your customers are, the more likely they are to make bad decisions. this is important when you have a monopoly. because there may be better options, but the company behind the monopoly doesn't want you to know that.

And making bad decisions is what you are doing, when you use Windows in a corporate environment. Thus ms is the driving force behind the covid lockdowns and the vaccinations. Because vax are an effective method of inserting potentially damaging foreign substances into the human body, especially when its gubermint sponsored. Folks end up brainwashed, and brainwashed folks don't make good decisions. the corps moves are quite transparent. Historically purchases have been to squander any potential threats to their hegemony. Hotmail (communication), Skype (communication), Nokia (aka AT&T, aka Bell Labs)... They bought github to monitor the foss folks. tracking of projects, and to see who needs to be targeted - who is a threat to their business model. what projects need to be stamped out. next they helped institute the lockdowns and promoted the vaccinations, because people are getting too smart, and vax are an effective method to control the population (to dumb them down).

A funny aside, is that ideally they would like to shut github down (long term goal). But that simply isn't possible. The amount of people in software that would move to something else (many already have) is so great, that this inertia can't be stopped. Open/Free source software will win.*

• Note: I can't make any guarantees for humans on planet earth winning/surviving though.

Spam Filtering Services based on MX records

There is a product which will do spam filtering on your email for you. You pay a subscription and then point your mx records at the spam filter service. The spam filter service then vets all incoming email, before forwarding the email to your servers. It's standard stuff.

So where's the bullshit?

These solutions are geared towards MSP, aka IT companies (yes, MSP is a buzzword for IT guy, and any IT guy/girl that refers to himself as an MSP, is full of it) which means they obfuscate what they do. It's hard to find a straightforward example that basically says:

"you point mx at us, we (try to) remove spam, then we forward to your email server. " 

That's basic caveman / layman explanation, and it's all you need. Instead, you get bullshit. Loads. There will be a 'How it works" section that literally says nothing, zero, about how it works. No mention of mx, no mention of mitm. Nothing. There will be fluffy words like cloud, and antispam, antivirus, email gateway, targeted threat protection. It's something the PR department thought up. Nowhere is

"you point mx at us, we (try to) remove spam, then we forward to your email server. " 

It's collusion, and I am not joking, because the great majority of these services all advertise like this. It's a secret handshake, a wink-wink-nod-nod between the software company and it guys. A mafia system. This isn't unique to IT industry (for example some electronics chips will have data sheets that basically expect you to understand how to use the chip before reading the data sheet. The instructional information might sort of be in there, but it's so devoid of substance that it really wouldn't be able to teach anyone without external resources. It's more there just for the sake of something being there. Again, not limited to electronics data sheets. All kinds of trades play this game.), but it deserves to be pointed out.

Some at least, try to explain. https://mxmailfilter.com/ Although this one doesn't explicitly say it's an MX mitm, but it's more obvious. Is it that the smaller players are trying to explain, while the big guys sit on their laurels and obfuscate?

I did find one that explained what they do, but I had to hunt, had to click down through two levels from the homepage to get to it). Anyways, I'm not just being silly here. The MX email filtering services really seem to all agree, that the homepage will NOT tell you what it does in below terms. What a joke. Man I hate the IT industry. And why shouldn't I? They are primarily proprietary software goons. Like attracts like. And the proprietary software attracts proprietary software. The IT industry however, is a topic for another article, and while I have more to say about it, it won't be here. ref: https://www.mxguarddog.com/faq.technical/

In simple language, how does MX Guarddog work?
Our email security service (including anti-spam and anti-virus) use the MX records for your
domain to direct email to MX Guarddog's distributed network of servers. Our servers scan
incoming mail for email-borne threats and place bad mail into quarantine before reaching
your server.

Messages that are clean are passed to your server where they are delivered to the inbox. 

search term to find this product is

email filtering service mx

*note that I don't recommend any of these services necessarily. So there is at least product that explains it, but that's one out of 6, and only if you know what you are looking for... The average business owner is not going to find this. And that's the point. Uneducated users are more valuable for crooked businesses. Uneducated users will accept the bullshit. Proprietary software loves uneducated users.

Power to the corporations.

One might make the argument that: "These pages are geared towards IT guys because business owners are stupid and need their hands held OR don't allow for markup, and are too much effort to support." That doesn't justify obfuscation. They could still explain what the product does. Whether they sell to end users or contractors is a separate matter.