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RiffClown Inner circle Yorktown, Virginia (Previously Germany) 1579 Posts |
A Little User Education goes a long way. A relative's computer was back-doored about a year ago (due to an email attachment) and the result was my (until then) SPAM Free account was immediately besieged with massive amounts of garbage. I know it was their system as it was the only one that had both mine and my wife's email addresses in the address book. I rebuilt their system completely to DE-Zombie it and went to great lengths to educate them about email attachments and links in emails. Luckily, I have several email accounts and the one I have associated with financial accounts isn't in anyone's address book to be harvested. After a little bit of research and a lot of writing email Outlook Rules, I've come to the conclusion that email as a communication medium is now nearly useless. I don't even read emails to those accounts any more. I do have a few accounts I trust that remain SPAM-Free.
The downside is, it has come full circle. So much garbage has been spoofed from our domain that my legitimate emails from that domain are now pretty much blacklisted everywhere. I know this because my default account receives all of the bounce backs and even threats from users that also don't want SPAM and take it out on me thinking I'm the source. SPAM has become much more sophisticated as of late. The Phishers have pulled out all of the stops to get your info and your hard earned cash. The economics of SPAMMING and PHISHING are pretty clear. It cost next to nothing to send out millions of emails and just one bite pays high dividends at the expense of others. I personally think SPAMMERS should be forced to sort the chaff from every shredder on the planet and put them in alphabetical order. After they finish that they should be driven off a cliff like the lemmings they so often accuse their victims of being. To make matters worse, the crime routinely crosses state and international boundaries with no culpability. There is very little danger of the SPAMMER actually being caught and even less of them being punished. Law Enforcement rarely has the necessary resources to address the problem and even the CAN SPAM act has no teeth unless the Spammers are totally stupid (which most of them aren't.) The even sadder side to it all is once you bite, your financial stability is over. Your Credit History and probably your bank account as well are trashed. You are left with little to no recourse. Your financial institution takes a big hit as well. The Phishing schemes that seem to come from them are the bait and it tarnishes their relationship with you even though they didn't send it. Now for the plan. If no one is gullible enough to click on a link in an unsolicited email, then the economic viability of this practice becomes a moot point. If you didn't request it, the email is at best SPAM and at worst the key to financial ruin. Never trust a link in an email, even from me!! Take everything with a grain of salt, especially if it promises something for nothing other than your password, PIN or other identifiable info. Never trust a URL that you didn't type yourself.
Rob "Riff, the Magical Clown" Eubank aka RiffClown
<BR>http://www.riffclown.com <BR>Magic is not the method, but the presentation. |
daffydoug Eternal Order Look mom! I've got 14077 Posts |
Very well spoken.
The difficult must become easy, the easy beautiful and the beautiful magical.
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daffydoug Eternal Order Look mom! I've got 14077 Posts |
Rob, I never open emails I don't recognize, but I often wonder about these completely idiotic, don't make any grammatic English sense at all one's that I get.
In one day's time I received the following "oh so intelligent" (actually numbskull) emails from bresistance: subject? at meeting from Lulu Barke: subject? no the stuck from Oscar: subject? npowers from Vexactly: subject? to chose What the %$^ is that crap, anyway? It makes NO sense whatsoever! How do they expect me to open their stupid email if they can't even make any sense in plain English? Is it just a TRAP to make me curious so that I will click on the thing and get a nice little virus? Or is it true that these morons can't even talk plain English? Anybody know? I know one thing. As curious as I am, I am not going to click on the thing to find out.
The difficult must become easy, the easy beautiful and the beautiful magical.
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Andy the cardician Inner circle A street named after my dad 3362 Posts |
I also delete a lot unread mails. Sometimes "real" stuff gets lost, but that is okay. If it is important, usually the mail will be resend to me after some time.
Cards never lie
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RiffClown Inner circle Yorktown, Virginia (Previously Germany) 1579 Posts |
Quote:
On 2007-02-04 10:22, daffydoug wrote: Very Wise Move indeed. If I'm curious enough to open something. I pull it over to my virtual machine and open it in its own sandbox. That way there's no chance of a problem. It can't touch the internet and compromise any information. I do open quite a few so I can tailor my rules to delete them next time.
Rob "Riff, the Magical Clown" Eubank aka RiffClown
<BR>http://www.riffclown.com <BR>Magic is not the method, but the presentation. |
MagiClyde Special user Columbus, Ohio 871 Posts |
Those ones with the weird wording are the latest spam trying to get people to buy worthless penny stocks. I know they're supposed to be coming from another country (Africa, I think). The reason for the spelling is that they hope to get it past your spam filters.
Magic! The quicker picker-upper!
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Andy the cardician Inner circle A street named after my dad 3362 Posts |
Nigeria connection . . . recently also a lot of mails from eastern Europe.
Cards never lie
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daffydoug Eternal Order Look mom! I've got 14077 Posts |
Quote:
On 2007-02-04 22:39, Rob Eubank wrote: Whats a virtual machine?
The difficult must become easy, the easy beautiful and the beautiful magical.
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RiffClown Inner circle Yorktown, Virginia (Previously Germany) 1579 Posts |
I can best explain it with a link
http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx
Rob "Riff, the Magical Clown" Eubank aka RiffClown
<BR>http://www.riffclown.com <BR>Magic is not the method, but the presentation. |
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