Wednesday, April 8, 2015

You had one job, PRESTO!

from:axxxxxxx7@gmail.com
reply-to:axxxxxxx7@gmail.com
to:cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date:Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 3:43 PM
subject:Presto email

I was on Presto's site to email them about something. They have one of those boxes for you to type your email into and submit. Did you know you can't use the following characters?

 | & ; $ % ' \ " <> () + , 

 So you can't even use dollar signs, apostrophes or commas.

 My email wouldn't go through until I removed all of those.

 I've never seen such a thing on an email form.

8 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 8, 2015 at 4:19 PM

    Fact. Presto doesn't want you to email them MUWAH HA HA HA HA HA

    ReplyDelete
  2. Warren DowneApril 9, 2015 at 8:12 AM

    I find sending an email to robert.hollis@prestocard.ca (Executive VP, PRESTO) with cc to CJ a more effective means of communicating with PRESTO.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TomWApril 9, 2015 at 8:40 AM

    Email addresses can't contain those symbols...

    ReplyDelete
  4. C.J. SmithApril 9, 2015 at 8:46 AM

    He meant the comment area. I tried it myself.

    We use feedback forms at work and people can use a dollar sign as well as slashes in their text if needed. The form doesn't fail on submit.

    So if you want to write "I put $100 on my card", the form won't accept that.

    ReplyDelete
  5. FREDApril 9, 2015 at 8:49 AM

    So I took a lot at the source code. The page was generated using MS Sharepoint and uses javascript to "authenticate" the form and .asp (Microsoft supported coding language).

    I don't personally understand why the big puzzle piece to make this work but there are other methods to use where special characters would be accepted.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousApril 9, 2015 at 8:54 AM

    The comment form doesn't link to a back-end function so it shouldn't require authentication. Looks like a design error to me.

    ReplyDelete
  7. TomWApril 9, 2015 at 1:29 PM

    Whopos my mistake!
    ~~~~~
    It sounds like a very lazy way to sanitise your data inputs (in effect, preventing you from using the comment form to make code run on the server).

    It's also bad security, because you could send unsanitised submissions to the server without using the comment form, thus bypassing the form's security measure.

    That said, there are very easy ways to snreu this isn't a security problem, and allow people to use whatever symbols they want, ɗɑɱɳȉʈ

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousApril 10, 2015 at 12:37 PM

    This issue happened to me about a year ago, when I followed up Presto told me they were developing a "work around", I guess this has not happened. Shrug

    ReplyDelete

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