There are many companies out there that provide email distribution services for small businesses like ours. Shortly after we subscribed to ListBuilder.com, they were acquired by Microsoft and quickly renamed "bCentral" (presumably the little "b" is for Small Business). We use this service to send out our monthly email newsletters to keep our customers and supporters in the loop on Special Ops happenings.

After last month's newsletter, one of our smart readers from across the pond--Callum Millard--pointed out that simply tossing an apostrophe into the "unsubscribe" link included in the emails generated a pretty nasty ASP.NET error. Tsk tsk tsk--how many times do we have to have to play the apostrophe game to prove to web developers that they must sanitize web input??

We escalated the embarrassing web application vulnerability to our contacts at bCentral. We expected some resolution, but never this:

Microsoft retiring List Builder Service

Effective 12:00 noon PDT on June 1st 2007 Microsoft will retire its List Builder service. ... To continue serving your subscribers with newsletters and other customer communications, we invite you to learn how you can sign up for e-mail marketing services with Constant Contact.

While we would have liked to see them correct the problem, apparently shutting down the entire subdivision was their response!