h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I'm pretty safe."

Famous last words

Definitly famous last words lol. Actually I tell you what surprises me, the amount of people who do not update their anti virus checkers and Windows Hosts files. The later being a very unsfull utility by windows that blocks any virus, trojans etc from communicating to its home server, if it uses a server kept in the hosts files directery.

An if you want to feel really safe and secure, there is only one way to do that, switch to Linux or another operating system, the words safe and windows can not be used in the same sentance, unless your saying its a pretty safe bet that I will have ten thousands problems as its a windows operating system....

Though to be truthfull the computer I am using right now is Windows XP pro lol.

Oh and another word of most unlikely wanted advise ditch the Microsoft outlook (and outlook express) as well, Get Thunderbird for you e mails as it is much securer than out look and other such programs.

Virus definitions file on an automatic update basis - check

Hosts files - check

Linux system - had one of those back at the old office. I hated it.

Dumping Outlook/Outlook Express - the subject line includes the word "GMail". Does this give you a clue

Yeah I know the subject line was g mail, just that some people I know, and me including have several e mail accounts with different companies, i.e. g mail, yahoo and hotmail etc etc.

I don't recall you ever saying I only use G mail in the thread so far so you may have other e mail acounts for all I know.

I tell you what I had a year or two ago that was annoying me was that in my yahoo account I was getting e mails sent to me in my bulk folder with my e mail address as the sender, and I kept getting failed e mail delivery reports when I had not sent e mails to anyone, I could only presume that a hacker had got access, but changing the passwprd to another hard pass word to break did not word either. The problem eventually went away. Very strange.

That's a virus...

"I tell you what I had a year or two ago that was annoying me was that in my yahoo account I was getting e mails sent to me in my bulk folder with my e mail address as the sender, and I kept getting failed e mail delivery reports when I had not sent e mails to anyone, I could only presume that a hacker had got access, but changing the passwprd to another hard pass word to break did not word either. The problem eventually went away. Very strange."

Standard virus behaviour, but not necessarily your fault.

You give someone your e-mail address, they put it into Outlook - they get a virus and the virus picks a name at random from their address book and spoofs the mails it sends out to look like you're sending them.
You then get all the 'failed' messages and the irate people telling you you've got a virus and then waste your time trying to look for a non-existent virus on your own machine!


Back on the subject of spam... One of the worst culprits for that has got to be Adobe.
Set up a new work e-mail account for myself one day - hadn't sent a single e-mail from it or told anyone about it. The next day I used it to
send a product registration mail to Adobe.

Within 48 hours the mailbox was being hit at a rate of around 50 or 60 viagra adverts per day!

Actually I read some where about the idea that big companys and some malicious software makers might be working together to get information...

I have to say that having to register products from companys is annoying. I make sure to specify that I want no mail from them or anyone affilited with them etc, but I still get the occasional crap. Actaully I went to register a product from Activision the other day, I ended up not bothering as they nly had two options for registration, people living in America or Canada.

"...and Windows Hosts files. The later being a very unsfull utility by windows that blocks any virus, trojans etc from communicating to its home server"

That's not entirely correct. Firstly. it's not a utility the way that a piece of software is a utility - the Hosts file is simply a text file which contains the urls of any website or web page you don't want your computer to connect to. If you add http://www.bbc.co.uk to it you won't be able to access Hootoo.

And it doesn't block *any* virus or Trojan - it only blocks the ones it knows about. In other words the ones that are trying to phone home to urls that you know of or have heard of, either through a website that tracks them and provides a ready-made Hosts list or via some sort of community, be it an email group, a newsgroup etc, and have added to your Hosts file.

I have a good, updated Hosts file, I have Zone Alarm, I have AVG anti-virus (updated frequently), I have ad-Aware and Spybot, my PC is on a router, and I'm *very* careful about which websites I visit and which emails I open. I'm pretty damn savvy when it comes to security, but in the past week or so my PC has started doing strange things which make me wonder if there's something in there I'd rather not have on my machine. Of course, it could just be Mr Gates' software playing up

So I say again GD - famous last words.

I said I was pretty safe. I didn't say that I was totally or even very safe.

What I do know is that I know more about keeping myself safe on't net than all of my non-h2h2 friends or my family.

I do recognise that there are people hereabouts who know more, and do more. As for me, I'm not paranoid enough to go down a full-on route. I have learnt about the issues (which is more than 99% of folk do) and have picked a level of risk that I am prepared to live with, and I protect myself to that level.

* still struggles with the concept of GD being safe *





















* gets her coat and gets ready to go on holiday *



* OK so I am not taking the coat! *

Hey Grey Desk - Did you get all that great porn I sent you ?

On a week long count I've got 379 spam messages. That's 54 per day

Dang - I'm getting two or three a week... if that.

I got 6 German SPAM messages shortly after joining a Yahoo! message board - thats it. My penis remains unenlarged, my route to wealth remains in the slow lane, and I have to make do with ginseng instead of viagra.

I get about 3 every two or three weeks.

My GMail accounts are all still clear which is nice Though I occasionally get emails which have been sent to different GMail address turning up in my spam box, very bizzare

GD, you said a picture came up, I assume it wasn't an external one as GMail usually block those.

I've not deleted any of the spam messages, just so that I could see how many I actually get in the 30 days that Gmail hangs on to them for.


One-thousand four-hundred and seventy-three

My new gmail account in my married name (NEVER entered into any online forms or shopping or anything) is now getting a couple of spam messages a day for some sort of dating site* My old yahoo account, that I have entered all over the place with wanton abandon has never had any. Is yahoo's spam filter just much better than gmail, or is it that the spammers can't be bothered to target yahoo users?

*suspect it is rather more than just 'dating' but am not going to look.

k

I've never known gmail to delete *any* mails in the trash folder, even though it says they do. I've had trashed mails going back six months or more in some instances.

I'm talking about the *spam* folder, Gosho