I wanna hurt this guy!

[Darwin]

One other thing I did when I got worried about security/fed up with spam was switch from Outlook Express to Outlook. It's not to bad a learning curve and I could never go back now. I dimly recall you talking about having switched in the other direction, Curt, but am not sure. Anyway, I bring it up now because of one feature: in Outlook Express if you enable auto-preview it auto-previews in all folders. In Outlook you can customize this feature for every folder. It's useful when you are dealing with spam. I have my "unread mail" folder setup W/O autopreview along with my junk mail and junk suspects folders. This way I can tell at a glance what is where and act accordingly. Likewise if I leave my main mail folder open and come back to Outlook later there is a reduced chance of me viewing malicious content because chances are high that it's already been diverted into either junk mail/junk suspects.

If you're worried about newsgroups and such, I initially went with Newsgator (still have a current licence) but found over time that I actually don't mind having to open up Outlook Express for newsgroups and Feeddemon  for RSS, even this actually kept me wed to OE for about a year beyond when I knew I should make the change... Just my take on this...

[Carol Haynes]

I don't know what app you are referring to, Carol, but it is not SPAMfighter. Once you have clicked "allow", the sender will never be deleted no matter what others may think of it.

-Curt (August 28, 2007, 10:55 AM)

The problem is that a number of legitimate and useful newsletters are sent from different email addresses for each issue - in this case you can't "allow" and address because you don't know what it is until it arrives. If other people have marked some of the previous emails as spam because they are too idle to unsubscribe it can have a long term effect on all other users of the service who then have all the email dumped in the Junk mail pile.

I haven't tried SPAMfighter because I tried so many similar services for other 'community' approach spam filter companies and they all caused me major annoyance. I am not saying SPAMfighter is bad but now I rely on my own resouces to filter Spam - and I'd guess my filtering system (based on POPfile bayesian analysis of the content) is over 99.9% effective without having to depend on external services or internet connections for checking incoming mail.

One of the nice features of POPfile is that it tells you how many messages it has classified incorrectly (based on you having to correct it) so you can see how quickly the sorting process gets increasingly accurate. The great thing is you are limited to filtering spam.

For example you can filter all emails relating to "photography" or "security" or "shopping" (or whatever) so that you can filter email without having to set up lots of complicated rules in your email client. All you have to do is when you set up the filter is give it a batch of emails that are eg. shopping emails and a batch that aren't - it then very quickly works out what characteristics are common to 'shopping' emails.

[Darwin]

One of the nice features of POPfile is that it tells you how many messages it has classified incorrectly (based on you having to correct it) so you can see how quickly the sorting process gets increasingly accurate. The great thing is you are limited to filtering spam.

SpamBayes will allow you to check on this kind of information as well. It's been flawless for me, with no false positives, for years. PopFile sounds interesting, too (never tried it).

[Curt]

One other thing I did when I got worried about security/fed up with spam was switch from Outlook Express to Outlook. It's not to bad a learning curve and I could never go back now. I dimly recall you talking about having switched in the other direction, Curt, ...

-Darwin (August 28, 2007, 11:39 AM)

Yes, I have been forced to replace my darling Outlook with Outlook Express (my Office 2003 will not repair / re-install) until I manage to repair this XP or get a new PC.

I have been told that the auto-preview is a security risk?? For this reason I only had the feature enabled in subfolders (in Outlook), and don't use it in Outlook Express. But I do miss it, along with a lot of other features...

As for newsgroups, I was using RSS Popper in Outlook, so I never needed Outlook Express.

The problem is that a number of legitimate and useful newsletters are sent from different email addresses for each issue

-Carol Haynes (August 28, 2007, 11:52 AM)

- that would of course be a problem. Only, I have never heard of such newsletters. Are they for some closed circle only? Sorry for asking, it really is no concern of mine.

[Darwin]

Yes, I have been forced to replace my darling Outlook with Outlook Express (my Office 2003 will not repair / re-install) until I manage to repair this XP or get a new PC.

This sounds ominious - I thought that ths was a relatively new PC?

[Curt]

Yes, you are right, Darwin, your memory serves you well. I bought this machine February the 24'th, but from day two I was disappointed with it. However, I expected that I had installed too many programs for the memory to handle (150 apps on the first day), so I delayed my reactions, thinking that the problems would go away when I purchased and installed some more RAM. As time has gone bye, I have come to realize that memory alone will not do the trick. There is something basically wrong with either the hardware or the i386 (reinstalling XP didn't help), but I haven't got a clue of what it may be - I can only tell about the symptoms. The situation has of course been worsed by my poor understanding of secure behaviour for Windows users. You know; "do you really want to delete this backup file?" and such. Well, I didn't actually delete a backup file, but the principles are just about the same, I guess; very often I am too hasty to act, and too slow to react (sorry): too slow to undo, and such.

[Darwin]

Your machine isn't running an i386 processor, is it? Surely it's at least a Pentium of some flavour - that must be a typo - i586? Anyway, that is disappointing and I hope you get it sorted out soon!

[Curt]

I was merely referring to the installation CD's folder, C:\WINDOWS\I386
- which I used to reinstall SP2

CPU Name : Intel Celeron D (Cedar Mill-V)
Vendor String : GenuineIntel
Name String : Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.33GHz

Thanks, Darwin, for hoping 

[Darwin]

Ah, that makes sense! Let us know if there is anything that we can do to help troubleshoot your problem.

[Curt]

You can bet that I will let you all know....   

But it all begins with repairing the CD drive. A CD "exploded" while playing, and there are thousands of little pieces of the disc preventing the door from closing - and so far I haven't had the courage to open the tower, in order to fix it.

[Carol Haynes]

Curt - buy a Pioneer DVD+-RW DL drive - and chuck out the old drive. You can get a brand new Pioneer drive for about $16/$30 and they are fantastic and burn any format you like. For example see http://www.overclock...php?prodid=CD-044-PO (not exactly known as a cheap supplier but this seems to be a common price for these drives. I have 4 of the - well actually the previous model - and they are fantastic).

[f0dder]

I "SPAMfighter-blocked" the spam mail (from the initial post in this thread), and then tried to send a mail from me to me. The first one was blocked by Outlook Express (OE), so I told OE to mark mails from me, and then I send off another mail from me to me. This one went all through. But I will of course have to wait and see if "he" (the guy I wanna hurt) ever sends me another mail (from "me"), before I know if the trick has worked the way I am hoping.

-Curt (August 28, 2007, 11:18 AM)

Ummm, so after you blocked the spam mail and sent yourself a mail, that mail was blocked?

So, with this "community based" approach, won't that mean that everybody else using spamfighter will not be able to receive mails from you, only yourself since you explicitly allowed mails from yourself?

[Curt]

No, at least five persons have to block a mail before it is blocked in general. And then they may still recieve it, but in the SPAMfighter folder, so they can accept it (or not) if they want to. You cannot block me from mail I want to recieve.

[Curt]

@ Carol, Oh, I would really like to have a Pioneer drive... oh yes! However, the  DVD RW  that came with the machine half a year ago, is (was) of reasonable quality (though made in China). I guess I will save my money and go for a new duo/quad core PC.