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Inside this issue:
Fraud, Viruses, Spam, Spyware
I thought I had covered these issues thoroughly, yet every month I still get at least a dozen emails from people who simply ignored all the warnings. Then there is the flip side, the well-meaning people who believe that they have to spam the world with a warning about every new viruses coming along. I get almost daily messages from well-meaning friends saying "Don't open any email that says 'here's a good joke' or 'I love you' etc, etc. Some (and in my opinion incompetent) managers of corporate email systems react to every new virus by blocking specific words from their company's email program. One company blocked any email with the words 'joke' or 'funny.' This makes as much sense as stationing anti-terrorist security guards at the airports with orders to turn back anyone who identifies himself as an Al-Queida operative, but letting everyone else through. Don't these so-called experts understand that virus writers will keep changing the subject of their emails? By the same token, don't the folk who keep opening unknown emails and launching unknown attachments understand the same thing?
Then we have those phishing scams where you get an email that looks like it came from Paypal, Citibank, Ebay, etc telling you that there is a problem with your account. In order to correct it, you must immediately reply with your name, social security number, age, date of birth, mother's maiden name, password to your burglar alarm and so on. You would like to think that no one falls for this, but news reports claims that about 5% of recipients actually respond with this information. Some enter it in a reply email, others click on a link provided in the email and fill out a form. Wake up, people! 1) No reputable company will ever ask for this information in an email. 2) Just because the link looks like Paypal, doesn't mean it is. Read the next article for information on an Internet Explorer bug that lets scammers duplicate a site, down to its URL.
Spyware is a different issue. There are "free" products offered on the Internet solely for the purpose of collecting your personal information. This information can be used to place you on dozens of spam lists, to track your activity and even to place programs on your computer which will hijack you to sites you don't want to see. So after all that you will suffer in return for the product, was it really "free?" Juno offers "free" email but in return for it, you agree to accept their spam and to allow them to load programs on your computer. Would you agree if the Post Office offered you free postage in return for the right to give your information out to other places, to open your mail and even come into your house and look around? Why would you give up your privacy in order to save about $10 a month, the cost of a real ISP? And in the end, you aren't saving anything. Just within that past month, I have gone to several homes where their computers were running sluggishly and certain functions didn't work. In each case, I found the systems loaded with spyware which took up to several hours to remove. One particular machine, in a home with children, had been infected by a program that kept changing the Internet Explorer home page to a porn site. The cost of having all this removed far exceeded the cost of any "free" program received in exchange for permitting this invasion.
So here is the only real antidote to protecting yourself against viruses, spyware and scams:
1) Get a good spam filter. There are many available for free or for a small donation. Spamihilator (free) in combination with mailwasher (free but a small donation is requested) can pre-filter most of your spam, let you read messages in text format (which prevents attachments from activating) and lets you delete the messages on the server without downloading the attachments.
2) Get a good anti-virus program. There are several available for free and several for very low cost.
3) If you are on the Internet often or if you are connecting via DSL or cable, you MUST use firewall software. Zone Alarm is available free from zonelabs.com. There are others available such as Norton, MacAfee, Tiny Personal Firewall, etc. Firewalls prevents hackers from getting into your system. They also prevent trojan horses ("phone home applications") and many worms.
4) Never download an attachment unless you know who it came from and why they sent it. Even if it came from a friend, that friend may have been infected by a worm that is sending itself to everyone on the mailing list.
5) If you receive an email claiming that there is a problem with your paypal, ebay, credit card, etc, never click the link in the email. Enter the address directly into Internet Explorer or use a favorite that you have previously saved.
charger and four 2200ma AA batteries
These are Nimh batteries which can be recharged to full power hundreds of times. At 2200ma, they outlast regular batteries by about 300% between charges. I recommend one set with charger for $10 and a second set without charger for $5, so you can keep one set in your digital camera or other device and the second set charging at all times.
Samsung digital camcorder
Another price drop brings this highly rated digital camcorder to below $400. It can download your movies in digital format into a PC using a firewire port. You can connect a VCR to it and convert your old tapes into CDRs or DVDs. With a memory stick, you can take digital still snapshots.
Toshiba 4 megapixel digital camera
Still the best deal in a digital camera, Toshiba's 4 megapixel zoom camera is $250.
XXcopy.com
A copy program with many parameters you can control.
Leopard Programming
A neat little windows programming language that lets even novices create simple windows programs.
saypad
A program that will read aloud to you.
xp resources
More Windows XP resources
Here is a site for XP/Nt/2000: Wayne's Resource Sites
There is a membership fee of $8 a year which allows you to send personal greeting cards to family members.
Thanks to Leonard, one of our readers, for sending this in.