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#11
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![]() "Michael Wise" wrote in message ... In article et, "Dudley Henriques" wrote: ... I was well over 100 spams a day, due to having multiple email addresses, posting to the news groups a lot, and having a web site with hundreds of individual pages, each with my email on it. Changing the email addresses would have inconvenienced my contributors/customers/suppliers/relatives/friends. However, after some work and about $20 in expense, all but about 50 to 100 spams a day are flushed away and I never see them. Of the ones I still get, the funniest are the ones supposedly from the people who manage the email services for my domain. Since "I" am the only one who manages my domain, I tend to be a bit suspicious! After the Swen virus hit, I was getting over a hundred a day. I finally got Mailwasher and bounced them all. The robots pick up continious bounces apparently... Not really. The way most of these sorts of viruses operate these days is by turning the infected person's computer into a mail relay without their knowledge. The term for this sort of thing is "owning" a machine. They then scan the Outlook and Outlook Express data files as well as web cache and mine out all email addresses. The infected machine's new stealth mail relay mechanism is then used to send copies of the virus to every mined address...and it uses a return address of any one of the mined addresses. Any of the targeted addresses which actually result in another infection are in turn going to do the same process. This is why these viruses spread so rapidly. Why should virus writers want to turn peoples' home and business computers into stealth mail relays? Easy, they are paid to do so by professional spam gangs who will then turn around and use all these new mail relays to spew out their spam. Some 80% is relayed through "owned" MS Windows PC's on home cable and dsl networks (some 10,000 "owned machines)...and some 90% spamvertises Western sites hosted in China. It never ceases to amaze me how many people using Microsoft operating systems either don't care or are just to damn ignorant to secure their machines (with anti-virus software they keep current). That said, there's a lot ISP's and companies could be doing to stop or majorly contain such quick and penetrating viral outbreaks. Blocking this sort of stuff at the mail server or network border are not that difficult to implement....and should be required of every ISP and it should be free. I have such protection on all my clients' email servers, and it has caught and blocked 100% of attempted virus relays before they can make into my customers' mail boxes. It's only so many sysadmins at large ISP's are too lazy and/or incompetent, that consumers are left thinking Mailwasher and products like it are necessary. They are only necessary to make up for their provider's incompetence. So what happens when you're using a product like Mailwasher and it tags and rejects a virus-infected email? Not much, these sorts of emails have forged return addresses 99.9% of the time...and will either go to somebody who scratches their head wondering why they're being accused of sending a virus...or to a bogus address. The same goes for spam. The only way to tell the real source (well at least the last hop) of spam is by looking at the IP which relayed it to your smtp server (either by looking at your message headers or your mail server's logs). With that IP address, you have enough info to root out who is responsible for abuse from that net block and make complaints accordingly. The user-level anti-spam software is largely worthless in actually having an effect on stopping that spam from spamming you again or rejecting to the right people. It is reasonably effective of keeping the garbage out of your mail box...which I guess is as much as most end-users care about. The fact remains, if the provider did its job at the server level, you wouldn't need such programs. I know that's a big "if", but there are plenty of IPS's (as well as email hosters) to choose from who actually know a thing or two about blocking spam and viruses. Of course, you could always get a Mac and never have to worry about these sorts of viruses. ; ) --Mike First of all, my computer is protected by a very good anti virus program. In fact, the virus was never an issue for me. What WAS an issue were the 100 or so emails, (infected or not infected) that were sitting on the Earthlink server just waiting for me to hit the download button so I could sit here for two hours waiting for the crap to get downloaded so I could delete it. The problem for me, as it was for many others, was the unacceptable download time taken to get these bogus emails down to where they could be deleted without opening them. I think we all know that the answer to this is for the ISP to have adequate programs installed on their servers to eliminate these problems, but the simple truth is that most do not. My antivirus program (Computer Associates) is completely up to date and will catch any virus' infected messages after downloading, but who the hell wants to sit on their ass for two hours and wait while all the mess is coming in at 56kbs; I sure don't! :-) After complaining along with a million other people to the ISP's to install software that catches all this crap, I, along with a million other people out here installed Mailwasher so that we can see what the hell was sitting on the server and get rid of the crap BEFORE downloading it. Bottom line is that until the ISP's start nailing this stuff on their servers, the general public is left to programs like Mailwasher to help them delete these messes from the server, or else get a Mac! I don't want a Mac! Mailwasher works just fine for me. In fact, the spam level is practically non existent at this point and Mailwasher isn't really necessary at all.....until next time that is!! :-) Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired For personal email, please replace the z's with e's. dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt |
#12
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In article et,
"Dudley Henriques" wrote: "Michael Wise" wrote in message ... In article et, "Dudley Henriques" wrote: ... I was well over 100 spams a day, due to having multiple email addresses, posting to the news groups a lot, and having a web site with hundreds of individual pages, each with my email on it. Changing the email addresses would have inconvenienced my contributors/customers/suppliers/relatives/friends. However, after some work and about $20 in expense, all but about 50 to 100 spams a day are flushed away and I never see them. Of the ones I still get, the funniest are the ones supposedly from the people who manage the email services for my domain. Since "I" am the only one who manages my domain, I tend to be a bit suspicious! After the Swen virus hit, I was getting over a hundred a day. I finally got Mailwasher and bounced them all. The robots pick up continious bounces apparently... Not really. The way most of these sorts of viruses operate these days is by turning the infected person's computer into a mail relay without their knowledge. The term for this sort of thing is "owning" a machine. They then scan the Outlook and Outlook Express data files as well as web cache and mine out all email addresses. The infected machine's new stealth mail relay mechanism is then used to send copies of the virus to every mined address...and it uses a return address of any one of the mined addresses. Any of the targeted addresses which actually result in another infection are in turn going to do the same process. This is why these viruses spread so rapidly. Why should virus writers want to turn peoples' home and business computers into stealth mail relays? Easy, they are paid to do so by professional spam gangs who will then turn around and use all these new mail relays to spew out their spam. Some 80% is relayed through "owned" MS Windows PC's on home cable and dsl networks (some 10,000 "owned machines)...and some 90% spamvertises Western sites hosted in China. It never ceases to amaze me how many people using Microsoft operating systems either don't care or are just to damn ignorant to secure their machines (with anti-virus software they keep current). That said, there's a lot ISP's and companies could be doing to stop or majorly contain such quick and penetrating viral outbreaks. Blocking this sort of stuff at the mail server or network border are not that difficult to implement....and should be required of every ISP and it should be free. I have such protection on all my clients' email servers, and it has caught and blocked 100% of attempted virus relays before they can make into my customers' mail boxes. It's only so many sysadmins at large ISP's are too lazy and/or incompetent, that consumers are left thinking Mailwasher and products like it are necessary. They are only necessary to make up for their provider's incompetence. So what happens when you're using a product like Mailwasher and it tags and rejects a virus-infected email? Not much, these sorts of emails have forged return addresses 99.9% of the time...and will either go to somebody who scratches their head wondering why they're being accused of sending a virus...or to a bogus address. The same goes for spam. The only way to tell the real source (well at least the last hop) of spam is by looking at the IP which relayed it to your smtp server (either by looking at your message headers or your mail server's logs). With that IP address, you have enough info to root out who is responsible for abuse from that net block and make complaints accordingly. The user-level anti-spam software is largely worthless in actually having an effect on stopping that spam from spamming you again or rejecting to the right people. It is reasonably effective of keeping the garbage out of your mail box...which I guess is as much as most end-users care about. The fact remains, if the provider did its job at the server level, you wouldn't need such programs. I know that's a big "if", but there are plenty of IPS's (as well as email hosters) to choose from who actually know a thing or two about blocking spam and viruses. Of course, you could always get a Mac and never have to worry about these sorts of viruses. ; ) First of all, my computer is protected by a very good anti virus program. In fact, the virus was never an issue for me. Which is a good thing. It would be even better if the biggies like Earthlink filtered such viruses such that they never made it to your mail box in the first place....because for every smart and prepared user on Earthlink such as yourself, there are probably five who are not. What WAS an issue were the 100 or so emails, (infected or not infected) that were sitting on the Earthlink server just waiting for me to hit the download button so I could sit here for two hours waiting for the crap to get downloaded so I could delete it. The problem for me, as it was for many others, was the unacceptable download time taken to get these bogus emails down to where they could be deleted without opening them. Right, and the tools are available to Earthlink which would allow them to block about 90% of the spam you receive and accurately tag as spam (but not block) some 90% of the remaining 10%. I think we all know that the answer to this is for the ISP to have adequate programs installed on their servers to eliminate these problems, but the simple truth is that most do not. Indeed, but there are always alternate providers or even plain email hosters who do. People need to speak to companies like Earthlink in the only language they care about and understand: $$. By customers continuing to pay for their services, they have little incentive to change. To add insult to injury, the end-user gets to a point where he/she has to spend extra $$ for software to bring their mail box back into something resembling control...when the ISP should be doing that. My antivirus program (Computer Associates) is completely up to date and will catch any virus' infected messages after downloading, but who the hell wants to sit on their ass for two hours and wait while all the mess is coming in at 56kbs; I sure don't! :-) Agreed. Just think if Earthlink actually gave a rat's a** about their incoming spam or the amount of "owned" Windows PCs on their consumer-grade DSL networks? Even so, there for years have been tools which will allow you to scan/read/delete your email while it still sits on your mail server. That way, you can delete before downloading any messages you don't want. POPmonitor (http://www.vechtwijk.nl/dev/popmonitor/) and Mail Siphon (http://www.maliasoft.com/us/mailsiphon.html) are two of several such tools which come to mind. After complaining along with a million other people to the ISP's to install software that catches all this crap, I, along with a million other people out here installed Mailwasher so that we can see what the hell was sitting on the server and get rid of the crap BEFORE downloading it. You can thank Earthlink for that. Bottom line is that until the ISP's start nailing this stuff on their servers, the general public is left to programs like Mailwasher to help them delete these messes from the server, Or use an ISP or email hoster who does nail the stuff on their servers. --Mike |
#13
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I think you and I are in total agreement on these issues. About the ISP's; I
finally chose Earthlink about 3 years ago after going through a bunch of them where cutoffs and issues were everyday companions. Actually, aside from the server issue, Earthlink has been a fairly good move for me. They keep the news server up and running most of the time which is good, and the price is right (senior discount :-) I don't surf all that much and e-mail and the newsgroups are my main interest for the computer, so a DSL, or a cable modem hasn't really come up around the house as an option. The old 56kbs modem works fine for us. I think Earthlink got the message after the Swen hit. They got clobbered!! Everybody was bitching at them to get their act together on the servers. Everything seems to be working much better now in my area at least. Those "robots" I was talking about seem to only be part of the problem with your email address being picked up on the Internet. I understand that it only takes 1 infected computer owned by someone who has your address in their address book to start an exponential series of this chain Spam. At the heart of the Swen mess, I was seeing about 100 of those 143.0kb messages sitting on the server waiting to be downloaded. There's no way of knowing whether you getting these originates from an infected address book somewhere or your email address being un-munged on Usenet. I munged as you can see, and the number of the bad messages went down immediately to much lower levels. Also, if I had been picked up by someone with an infected computer, they might have "cleaned up" their machine of Swen finally :-)) Anyway, I'm fairly back to normal now and hoping for the best as far as the future goes!! Dudley "Michael Wise" wrote in message ... In article et, "Dudley Henriques" wrote: "Michael Wise" wrote in message ... In article et, "Dudley Henriques" wrote: ... I was well over 100 spams a day, due to having multiple email addresses, posting to the news groups a lot, and having a web site with hundreds of individual pages, each with my email on it. Changing the email addresses would have inconvenienced my contributors/customers/suppliers/relatives/friends. However, after some work and about $20 in expense, all but about 50 to 100 spams a day are flushed away and I never see them. Of the ones I still get, the funniest are the ones supposedly from the people who manage the email services for my domain. Since "I" am the only one who manages my domain, I tend to be a bit suspicious! After the Swen virus hit, I was getting over a hundred a day. I finally got Mailwasher and bounced them all. The robots pick up continious bounces apparently... Not really. The way most of these sorts of viruses operate these days is by turning the infected person's computer into a mail relay without their knowledge. The term for this sort of thing is "owning" a machine. They then scan the Outlook and Outlook Express data files as well as web cache and mine out all email addresses. The infected machine's new stealth mail relay mechanism is then used to send copies of the virus to every mined address...and it uses a return address of any one of the mined addresses. Any of the targeted addresses which actually result in another infection are in turn going to do the same process. This is why these viruses spread so rapidly. Why should virus writers want to turn peoples' home and business computers into stealth mail relays? Easy, they are paid to do so by professional spam gangs who will then turn around and use all these new mail relays to spew out their spam. Some 80% is relayed through "owned" MS Windows PC's on home cable and dsl networks (some 10,000 "owned machines)...and some 90% spamvertises Western sites hosted in China. It never ceases to amaze me how many people using Microsoft operating systems either don't care or are just to damn ignorant to secure their machines (with anti-virus software they keep current). That said, there's a lot ISP's and companies could be doing to stop or majorly contain such quick and penetrating viral outbreaks. Blocking this sort of stuff at the mail server or network border are not that difficult to implement....and should be required of every ISP and it should be free. I have such protection on all my clients' email servers, and it has caught and blocked 100% of attempted virus relays before they can make into my customers' mail boxes. It's only so many sysadmins at large ISP's are too lazy and/or incompetent, that consumers are left thinking Mailwasher and products like it are necessary. They are only necessary to make up for their provider's incompetence. So what happens when you're using a product like Mailwasher and it tags and rejects a virus-infected email? Not much, these sorts of emails have forged return addresses 99.9% of the time...and will either go to somebody who scratches their head wondering why they're being accused of sending a virus...or to a bogus address. The same goes for spam. The only way to tell the real source (well at least the last hop) of spam is by looking at the IP which relayed it to your smtp server (either by looking at your message headers or your mail server's logs). With that IP address, you have enough info to root out who is responsible for abuse from that net block and make complaints accordingly. The user-level anti-spam software is largely worthless in actually having an effect on stopping that spam from spamming you again or rejecting to the right people. It is reasonably effective of keeping the garbage out of your mail box...which I guess is as much as most end-users care about. The fact remains, if the provider did its job at the server level, you wouldn't need such programs. I know that's a big "if", but there are plenty of IPS's (as well as email hosters) to choose from who actually know a thing or two about blocking spam and viruses. Of course, you could always get a Mac and never have to worry about these sorts of viruses. ; ) First of all, my computer is protected by a very good anti virus program. In fact, the virus was never an issue for me. Which is a good thing. It would be even better if the biggies like Earthlink filtered such viruses such that they never made it to your mail box in the first place....because for every smart and prepared user on Earthlink such as yourself, there are probably five who are not. What WAS an issue were the 100 or so emails, (infected or not infected) that were sitting on the Earthlink server just waiting for me to hit the download button so I could sit here for two hours waiting for the crap to get downloaded so I could delete it. The problem for me, as it was for many others, was the unacceptable download time taken to get these bogus emails down to where they could be deleted without opening them. Right, and the tools are available to Earthlink which would allow them to block about 90% of the spam you receive and accurately tag as spam (but not block) some 90% of the remaining 10%. I think we all know that the answer to this is for the ISP to have adequate programs installed on their servers to eliminate these problems, but the simple truth is that most do not. Indeed, but there are always alternate providers or even plain email hosters who do. People need to speak to companies like Earthlink in the only language they care about and understand: $$. By customers continuing to pay for their services, they have little incentive to change. To add insult to injury, the end-user gets to a point where he/she has to spend extra $$ for software to bring their mail box back into something resembling control...when the ISP should be doing that. My antivirus program (Computer Associates) is completely up to date and will catch any virus' infected messages after downloading, but who the hell wants to sit on their ass for two hours and wait while all the mess is coming in at 56kbs; I sure don't! :-) Agreed. Just think if Earthlink actually gave a rat's a** about their incoming spam or the amount of "owned" Windows PCs on their consumer-grade DSL networks? Even so, there for years have been tools which will allow you to scan/read/delete your email while it still sits on your mail server. That way, you can delete before downloading any messages you don't want. POPmonitor (http://www.vechtwijk.nl/dev/popmonitor/) and Mail Siphon (http://www.maliasoft.com/us/mailsiphon.html) are two of several such tools which come to mind. After complaining along with a million other people to the ISP's to install software that catches all this crap, I, along with a million other people out here installed Mailwasher so that we can see what the hell was sitting on the server and get rid of the crap BEFORE downloading it. You can thank Earthlink for that. Bottom line is that until the ISP's start nailing this stuff on their servers, the general public is left to programs like Mailwasher to help them delete these messes from the server, Or use an ISP or email hoster who does nail the stuff on their servers. --Mike |
#14
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![]() "Dudley Henriques" wrote in message ink.net... I think you and I are in total agreement on these issues. About the ISP's; I finally chose Earthlink about 3 years ago after going through a bunch of them where cutoffs and issues were everyday companions. Actually, aside from the server issue, Earthlink has been a fairly good move for me. They keep the news server up and running most of the time which is good, and the price is right (senior discount :-) I don't surf all that much and e-mail and the newsgroups are my main interest for the computer, so a DSL, or a cable modem hasn't really come up around the house as an option. The old 56kbs modem works fine for us. Stop bouncing messages and I'll agree with you too. |
#15
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In article ,
Michael Wise wrote: Of course, you could always get a Mac and never have to worry about these sorts of viruses. ; ) --Mike Yep. -- Ron |
#16
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#17
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#18
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![]() "Tank Fixer" wrote in message k.net... In article et, on Sun, 28 Mar 2004 21:32:13 GMT, Dudley Henriques attempted to say ..... You may want to log into your Earthlink webmail account and change a setting or two. I did a few weeks ago and found that the settings I had left in the past had caught a couple of hundred infected mails that earthlink quarenteened on the server. I would never have seen them if I had not by chance logged in to check something else. They just sit there for xx number of days and then are deleted. I use a simple dial up for email. I'm usually on the computer working most of the time during the day and evening. The server gets checked at least once an hour for email, so it's clean all the time. Earthlink's Spamator catches whatever it catches and that's what sits there and gets deleted over time. I don't even bother with Spamator. Anything that would go in there would only have been deleted by me manually anyway. Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired For personal email, please replace the z's with e's. dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt |
#20
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Ron Parsons wrote in message ...
Sometimes I forget that this is a rec.aviation group and not for pros like AvSig on CompuServe used to be when it was sponsored by ASI and John G. ran it. Still there are some here who have been there and done that and care to share with each other and others. Sharing means backing up your assertions with real-world facts sometimes, Ron. But there are also those who think that playing with their Goggle all day is a real world experience. ...and there are those who think a rudder could move so quickly that telemetric equipment can't record that movement.. So I'm going to self-moderate by the simple mechanism of putting anyone who asks for "cite" into the kill file. Of course, then you'd never have to back up any of your ridiculous bull**** like "JAA makes it a requirement that airlines who land in Europe buy Airbus". I don't mung my email address or bother to reply to emails from those who do. My reasoning is simple, I believe in quality like Boeing and Macintosh. And anyone who hints that other things might have equal or better quality gets killfiled! Brilliant! I'll try to keep in mind that not all are professionals here. Can't say I've seen you demonstrating much professionalism wit this little hissy fit... |
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