[W126 Coupe] Wm Rickman

[Dan Landiss]

Steve, as always, knows what he is talking about. A great number of 
AOL/Yahoo addresses have either been cracked or spoofed. I lean towards 
cracked because when the victims change their passwords, the spam 
usually goes away. Also, I often recognize the names of the other 
recipients, indicating that the cracker has gained access to the 
victim's address book.

I use a three-pronged approach to computer security:

You can check the effectiveness of various antivirus programs at
<http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/>. Click "Main
Tests" and then the couple of most recent results. I'm using the free
version of Avira and it seems to have little effect on the speed of
other programs (non-intrusive).

A good malware defense is Malwarebytes <http://www.malwarebytes.org>.

Secunia PSI helps you keep track of the security level of your programs
(whether any security patches have been issued by the publisher).
<http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/>

Total cost of the three above = $0.00.

Spam is a whole separate issue and requires a separate approach. It
ought to filtered out by your email host, but if they are doing a poor
job the filters in Thunderbird are quite effective.




on 1/24/2011 7:20 AM Steve Nervig wrote:

> Please note that it may or may not be Wm Rickman's computer that is sending out the virus. And it is probably NOT intentional. He or someone in his contacts list has an infected computer and it is sending out these virus messages via spybot malware unbeknownst to him.

>

> If you are unfortunate enough to own a Windows PC, you are vulnerable to this activity and must install and keep your virus detection software up to date. You might want to consider Malwarebytes Anti-Malware software also. If you don't do this, YOU could be sending out malware messages and not even know that your computer is doing it!

>

> Also, when you see an email that just has a link to some web page that you don't recognize, don't click it. Don't click on something when it is from someone that you don't know, and don't know what it is for.

>

> For example, this particular email sent to the MBCoups List from 'Wm Rickman' raised four flags in my mind:

> 1) the 'From' was someone who has not posted to the list recently (or ever),

> 2) the message contained no 'Subject',

> 3) the 'To'  was addressed to many recipients (none of which I knew), and

> 4) the message just had an web link in the body of the message.

>

> Any one of those four points would tell me that there was possibly something wrong with the message. All four combined told me to NOT to click on that link. Also, there had been several similar emails from, I believe, this same 'person' over the last few months.

>

> Use caution or you are just inviting pain. Hope this helps.

>

> Regards,

> Steve


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   "Courage means going against majority opinions in the name of the truth." --Vaclav Havel
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