O.T. - Bogus MS Patches

This morning I downloaded and installed Mailwasher (free) and it makes a lot
of difference.
You essentially delete the messages at the server before downloading to your
computer. Try it.

"RagDyer" wrote in message
...
Just a Heads-Up !

Saw a post here, a day or so ago about someone complaining about getting a
virus from Microsoft because, he thought, he posted to these groups.

This morning, I received 52 ... YES, I said 52 ... e-mails labeled in
some
fashion or other, as originating from MS, offering patches and updates or
notification of delivery failures of various e-mails !

I guess this has a lot to say about *not* using your true address here !
(I don't know why they didn't honor my footnote ?) vbFg
--

Regards,

RD
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Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit !
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MailWasher has an advantagle over Outlook Express Message Rules in the following:
-- can pick off any string in the headers
-- can pick off any string in the body, not just visible text
-- easier to work work with but of course

MailWasher has an advantage in identification
-- identifies the filter that catches the email and identifies it as such
on the list of emails (sender, subject, received, etc.); whereas in OE you have to put it
into separate folders and/or use color (colored text does not show up well on laptops).
-- You can identify email as from a friend by clicking friend checkmark on the email description line

MailWasher, additional advantages
-- You can access the files from Help, About and modify the text of rules etc., in addition
to normal facilities. entered from Ctrl+B or Ctrl+I

MailWasher is downloaded from http://www.mailwasher.net

This rule will identify viruses: Entered at Ctrl+I

Title: TVqQ virus
Rule: If the Body contains "TVqQ" then mark the message as mail to be deleted. This filter takes priority over the friends list.

Sample rules can be downloaded from
http://www.mailwasher.net/faq.php
be sure so modify anything with an asterisk, and to correctly enter your email address
on such lines or you will delete your legitimate email. That is why I do not do anything
automatically.

The problem is that without being set to automatic, OE and MailWasher do
not know about each other. If you clean out everything with MailWasher and then
go into OE you can receive several spams in OE during the the brief period.

--
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Don Guillett" wrote in message ...
This morning I downloaded and installed Mailwasher (free) and it makes a lot
of difference.
You essentially delete the messages at the server before downloading to your
computer. Try it.

Downloaded MailWasher this afternoon.

It's already saving me a lot of heartache. thanks for the tip :-)

--

Regards
Andy Wiggins
www.BygSoftware.com
Home of "Save and BackUp",
"The Excel Auditor" and "Byg Tools for VBA"


"David McRitchie" wrote in message
...
Between Outlook Express Rules and MailWasher, I had been
keeping the spam down rather well until yesterday, when I received
777 spams (in 23 hours) mostly fake patches with viruses with a size of
148 KB or higher. Coming in at the rate of 1 every 2 minutes
constantly, no letup during US East Coast daytime hours.

For those on MSN the rather aggressive filtering option will cut
off this flurry of SPAM , but it will also filter out your newsletters and
group email not addressed to you, so you will have to identify
them so they will not get filtered. The less aggressive option about
filtering obvious email does nothing.

For MSN only but I imagine most ISPs have something similar:
http://www.msn.com login and to "hotmail" (yes, even though it
is MSN that is where you look), under options:
Junk Mail Filter,
[x] Enhanced (most junk is caught),
[x] Deliver to Junk Email folder at MSN (stays there) for
examination, for
a period of time or space used, which was about two hours in
this
situation. Meaning I would not likely see anything legitimate
there
because it would already have been deleted from the junk folder.

After this filter was on (midnight) the next 60 minutes 31 emails were
trapped
at MSN, and 1 trivial spam came through and was trapped in my own filters
in this case by Mail Washer though it would have been filtered by my
Outlook Express Message Rules anyway. Thirteen hours later only five
additional trivial spams got past the MSN filtering. But three hours
ago
I got a phone call asking if I'd changed my email address. So I will have
to put mailing lists into the exceptions. Which is bad because you
usually don't know what they are until you start receiving them.

I use my email address in the newsgroups, and I don't know of
anyone with a two year old personal email address that does
not get spam whether they are in newsgroups or not, even if
they don't use it, they get found.

My notes on Outlook Express are at
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/oe6.htm

HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Ron de Bruin" wrote in message
...
If I take one cup of coffee and come back I have 52 of them Keng

I've managed to set up OE to handle this particular outbreak fairly well.
OOT, I've discovered by accident over the last 2-3 days that NAV run from a
non-passworded user account (XP) will *not* scan files in passworded user
account(s) folders. Symantec (who initially said "this is not a known
issue") has confirmed this is the case, and advised that the "workaround for
this is to remove the password for the user accounts". This is for info of
anyone else who may not have realised (OK, it's probably just me, then again
it's not covered *at all* in NAV Help).

Rgds,
Andy

"Andy Brown" wrote...
....
. . . it's not covered *at all* in NAV Help . . .

Begging the question whether it should be. One logical user's access to
other logical user's file is generally restricted by the OS. If user A can't
open user B's file stored in user B's home directory, user A can't really
suffer any harm from whatever is in those files. So NAV can't run as a
background process with Administrator priviledges?

Begging the question whether it should be.

I'm not saying there should be a way for AV software to compromise Windows
security, just that there should be a health warning, probably in XP User
Accounts info -- IMO there's a world of difference between user rights &
parental responsibility. It took *this* long to occur to me (my fault I
know), however I do know "the first thing" (?where the ON switch is?) about
PCs, others don't.

Rgds,
Andy

"RagDyer" wrote

Saw a post here, a day or so ago about someone complaining about getting a
virus from Microsoft because, he thought, he posted to these groups.

The other day I changed my "reply to" address in my news reader at home
to a brand new email address and posted one message to a motorcycle
group. When I got to work 45 minutes later I had 10 of those fake MS
update messages addressed to the new address.

Jordon

Jordon wrote:
"RagDyer" wrote

Saw a post here, a day or so ago about someone complaining about
getting a virus from Microsoft because, he thought, he posted to
these groups.

The other day I changed my "reply to" address in my news reader at
home
to a brand new email address and posted one message to a motorcycle
group. When I got to work 45 minutes later I had 10 of those fake MS
update messages addressed to the new address.

I've received hundreds of these to an account that I've never put on a
website....not a newsgroup, not a subscription...nothing.

In fact I set it up in OE, but haven't got around to using it yet.

Strangely, the address I use regularly has not received any of these virus
spams.

Sarah

If you have set this up and not used it yet, how do you know you have the virus
emails in it?


"Sarahsmith" wrote in message
...
: Jordon wrote:
: "RagDyer" wrote
:
: Saw a post here, a day or so ago about someone complaining about
: getting a virus from Microsoft because, he thought, he posted to
: these groups.
:
: The other day I changed my "reply to" address in my news reader at
: home
: to a brand new email address and posted one message to a motorcycle
: group. When I got to work 45 minutes later I had 10 of those fake MS
: update messages addressed to the new address.
:
: I've received hundreds of these to an account that I've never put on a
: website....not a newsgroup, not a subscription...nothing.
:
: In fact I set it up in OE, but haven't got around to using it yet.
:
: Strangely, the address I use regularly has not received any of these virus
: spams.
:
: Sarah
:
:

Lady Layla wrote:
If you have set this up and not used it yet, how do you know you have
the virus emails in it?

After getting the new address, I added it to my OE accounts. I have had
hundreds of these virus emails in it.

Pretty easy to see. They are all going to that folder in OE.

Am I missing something here?

Sarah