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#1
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Install that important patch
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#2
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted
the miccrosoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML. If you do this then the people who come here and thing that these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install them because they end up sending viruses to others who post here. Chrissy. |
#3
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
"Chrissy" wrote in message ... Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted the miccrosoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML. They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room If you do this then the people who come here and thing that these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install them because they end up sending viruses to others who post here. Chrissy. Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal rule you should follow with usenet. NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems. Keith |
#4
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
Keith Willshaw wrote
Chrissy wrote Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted the microsoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML. They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they want to and this can be done automatically. If you do this then the people who come here and thing that these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install them because they end up sending viruses to others who post here. Chrissy. Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal rule you should follow with usenet. NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems. But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to learn often come here to get answers to their questions. With the number of people I have heard of who are getting the virus which is being posted to these groups many times a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups, I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems. Chrissy. |
#5
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
"Chrissy" wrote in message ... Keith Willshaw wrote Chrissy wrote Please, please, please stop any attachments being posted the microsoft.public.* newsgroups it they include HTML. They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they want to and this can be done automatically. Yes but these ARENT moderated groups. If you do this then the people who come here and thing that these "Security Patches" from you are genuine because they are on a Microsoft newsgroup will not see them and install them because they end up sending viruses to others who post here. Chrissy. Microsoft have made it crystal cleat that the never post or mail patches in this way, that said there's a cardinal rule you should follow with usenet. NEVER NEVER load any program thats posted on ANY usenet forum no matter how respectable it seems. But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to learn often come here to get answers to their questions. Sorry but this is a lesson they have to learn if they wish to use Usenet. Usenet is by definition a dsitributed medium with no central control. With the number of people I have heard of who are getting the virus which is being posted to these groups many times a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups, I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems. Chrissy. They are being posted to lots of groups which are nothing to do with microsoft and also sent out by email. Yes you can prevent postng of ALL attachments to a newsgroup but that is rather limiting and prevents people from attaching legitimate stuff. Its surely far better to set up your reader not to download binaries if thats what you want. I'm not in favour of dumbing down, especially in newsgroups targetted at developers who may be expected to be a little more sophisticated than the average user. I suggest you cut down the crossposting if you reply I only read microsoft.public.excel.programming Posting to this many groups is frankly impolite, if you want to say something to microsoft send an email. Keith |
#6
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
"Chrissy" wrote...
... Keith Willshaw wrote ... They cant, these are NOT moderated by microsoft or anyone else for that matter, think of it as an interlinked chat room They can actually. Moderated groups are groups which have a person controlling what is and is not posted. The creator of a newsgroup can set up rules as to what can and cannot be put on that group - at least that was my understanding when I looked at setting one up. They can definitely specify that no attachments can be posted but I think they can also remove posts which they want to and this can be done automatically. ... While you're mostly correct about how moderated newsgroups work (moderators are gate keepers who review potential postings before they're propagated as newsgroup postings - this can be automated, but the rules would be simplistic), it doesn't alter the fact that Keith's correct - these newsgroups are *NOT* moderated. As long as they're not, discussion about what could be done if they were is idle speculation. Also, FWLIW, once a message is admitted to a moderated newsgroup, it's propagated like any other ng message to all NNTP servers that carry the ng. There's nothing moderators can do to delete ng messages at that point - it's entirely up to the ISPs to purge messages from their NNTP servers. But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to learn often come here to get answers to their questions. With the number of people I have heard of who are getting the virus which is being posted to these groups many times a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups, I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems. Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems. It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the internet - none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. If you were using a Linux box and using a maintenance service to keep current with security updates, you'd have been unaffected by Blaster, SoBig, Swen, etc. Ditto for FreeBSD, OS/2, Mac OS, Solaris, yada yada yada. Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope. -- Never attach files. Snip unnecessary quoted text. Never multipost (though crossposting is usually OK). Don't change subject lines because it corrupts Google newsgroup archives. |
#7
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
Harlan Grove wrote
"Chrissy" wrote... But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to learn often come here to get answers to their questions. With the number of people I have heard of who are getting the virus which is being posted to these groups many times a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups, I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems. Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems. That is simply not provable and almost certainly not true. If someone is a lurker then they are most likely to be interested in MS stuff specifically or computers generally. They are then more likely to be some what knowledgeable about computers and thus less likely to have a virus. Once a gain - the people with virus infections are likely to be the less well informed - the guy who is new to computers and has not yet learnt about viruses and how easy they are to get and how easy they are to avoid. It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the internet - I use ONLY MS Windows boxes to browse the internet and will continue to do so. none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. If you were using a Linux box and using a maintenance service to keep current with security updates, you'd have been unaffected by Blaster, SoBig, Swen, etc. Ditto for FreeBSD, OS/2, Mac OS, Solaris, yada yada yada. yada yada yada alright. All those systems WERE affected to the same extent mine was. I have NEVER had a virus infection and I doubt that I ever will. I will continue to get mail from people who do have viruses on their machines. The current problem I had did not affect my computer at all. It did however affect the mail server which hosts my domain - a Unix box. The affect was that it threw a spaz when I got 250MBytes of mail an day. No security updates would help that. Their system is set up to have limits on disk usage and if I approach that limit they e-mail me but continue to let me use more. The limit I have for each users mail box is 20 MBytes but I was using 69MBytes at one stage - I had turned off my computer to add new hardware so had not downloaded mail for about 15 mins. When I tried to get mail next their system kept saying that it could not allocate enough space for a temp folder so mail would not be deleted from the server. That meant that the mail was not marked as received and I ended up getting it about 10 times before I saw the problem. I can afford the bandwidth but that bandwidth costs them. It was a Unix system that was affected - no, they were not infected with the virus but they were affected none the less. Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope. I have learnt how to cope. What I don't do it make stupid statements to people which implies that if they only used non MS OSs then they would not be affected by viruses. This misinformation is misleading at best and probably dangerous if said to novice users from someone they "think" knows what he is talking about. Chrissy. |
#8
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
"Chrissy" wrote...
Harlan Grove wrote ... Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who read these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems. That is simply not provable . . . No less provable than your assertions. . . . and almost certainly not true. If someone is a lurker then they are most likely to be interested in MS stuff specifically or computers generally. They are then more likely to be some what knowledgeable about computers and thus less likely to have a virus. So we have an unprovable argument about whether it's posters (OPs only or regular respondents) or lurkers who would most likely be infected. Since this wave of 'Taste This...' faux patch advisories is restricted to Microsoft newsgroups, it's almost certain these ngs are built into the virus code. If so, it's quite possible that this virus has spread mostly by e-mail. It's well within many programmers' abilities to create on-the-fly NNTP accounts, and it's not exactly difficult to access msnews.microsoft.com. So it's actually unlikely the deluge is due primarily to ng users - OPs, regular respondents or lurkers. However, if it's mostly spread by Joe Bob's dumb uncle, bitching & moaning about the problem in a newsgroup thread will be singularly unproductive. It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb uncle can spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not, don't use it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the internet - I use ONLY MS Windows boxes to browse the internet and will continue to do so. Bully for you! My point is that, aside from e-mail and news *SERVERS* running other OSs which are just doing their job of passing along everything they haven't been instructed not to pass along, other OSs *can't* propagate these viruses (unless users provide additional code to do so, and thus become virus writers themselves). With regard to viruses, any other OS would be better for novice users to use. Macs would be a better example. none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. . . . ... Poor choice of wording on my part. Make that none affect any other *client* OS. Servers are a whole different matter. Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users just won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope. I have learnt how to cope. What I don't do it make stupid statements to people which implies that if they only used non MS OSs then they would not be affected by viruses. This misinformation is misleading at best and probably dangerous if said to novice users from someone they "think" knows what he is talking about. Bon mots from such an expert! Any other OS *is* safer as a *client* OS right now because almost all viruses are targetted as Windows. No prizes for guessing why that might be. If other OSs were to gain significant market share, this situation would change. However, all successful viruses (from the virus writers' perspective) make use of low-level OS functionality to establish and spread themselves. They can't work on multiple dissimilar OSs. What I'm trying to point out (whether or not you're too dim to understand it) is that there's one particular company that has a huge virtual bullseye painted on it. Using that company's products is an implicit acceptance of becoming a target. Most people who read these ngs accept that the benefits of using that company's products mostly outweigh the risks (or their employers have made that determination for them). Using other OSs isn't practical for most people because doing so requires either non-comodity hardware (bye, Mac OS) or nontrivial system administration skills (ta ta, Linux/BSD/Unix). Unfortunately, the latter is also what's required to make Windows machines safer for their owners/users and the whole internet community. So nothing will change for the better any time soon. 1. Viruses won't abate as long as anyone can get an e-mail account if they can pay for it. 2. Microsoft isn't going to moderate these newsgroups any time soon. 3. Most people only really learn from experience. 4. Complaining about this in ngs won't help (but there'll still be complainers). -- Never attach files. Snip unnecessary quoted text. Never multipost (though crossposting is usually OK). Don't change subject lines because it corrupts Google newsgroup archives. |
#9
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
Harlan Grove wrote
Bully for you! My point is that, aside from e-mail and news *SERVERS* running other OSs which are just doing their job of passing along everything they haven't been instructed not to pass along, other OSs *can't* propagate these viruses (unless users provide additional code to do so, and thus become virus writers themselves). With regard to viruses, any other OS would be better for novice users to use. Macs would be a better example. My point is that maybe MS OSs are more prone to viruses BUT all viruses cost people in time and money regardless of OS used. If the cost of a major hit by a virus is $10,000 by a company it really does not matter if it was because their Windows machines were infected or the sheer volume of data sent to their servers was too much and closed them down or the sys admin team spent time repairing machines because of a hoax virus notice. The bottom line takes into account more than the OS used. Bon mots from such an expert! Any other OS *is* safer as a *client* OS right now because almost all viruses are targetted as Windows. No prizes for guessing why that might be. If other OSs were to gain significant market share, this situation would change. However, all successful viruses (from the virus writers' perspective) make use of low-level OS functionality to establish and spread themselves. They can't work on multiple dissimilar OSs. What I'm trying to point out (whether or not you're too dim to understand it) is that there's one particular company that has a huge virtual bullseye painted on it. Using that company's products is an implicit acceptance of becoming a target. But nothing about MY almost TOTALLY MS system is vulnerable BECAUSE it is MS. All it takes to protect one's self are a few basic rules which one should follow regardless of OS used. My point, again, is the cost of viruses extends WAY beyond the actual infection and can have a huge impact on a company even if they do not get the virus infection on any of their computers. You mentioned novice users - no wonder we have a problem when we put a powerful tool in the hands of someone who does not know how to use it. In many countries it would be considered inappropriate (or even illegal) for a company to give a powerful tool (which could cause millions of dollars damage) to a totally untrained staff member but it is done all the time with computers then we wonder why so much mayhem is caused. Chrissy. Chrissy. |
#10
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Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT
"Chrissy" wrote in message ... Harlan Grove wrote You mentioned novice users - no wonder we have a problem when we put a powerful tool in the hands of someone who does not know how to use it. In many countries it would be considered inappropriate (or even illegal) for a company to give a powerful tool (which could cause millions of dollars damage) to a totally untrained staff member but it is done all the time with computers then we wonder why so much mayhem is caused. Balderdash, it happens every time an employee jumps into his car and every time a delivery van leaves the depot. One of the leading causes of death in the western world is the road tarffic accident and each death costs a large sum of money as well as the human cost. In any event any company with a half way competent IT manager has firewalls and virus protection in place. The problem with viruses is more the millions of home users with neither. Keith |
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