Well if you want a big beige unsophisticated noisy box stuck in your era then why not. PCs are cheap because they are badly made.
Hearing aids are very high quality, minaturised devices, and suprsingly not sold in huge numbers, so there is no economy of scale
Right your hearing aid? does your house contents insurance not cover this?
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'PCs are cheap because they are badly made'
Oh, I dunno - my self-built one here was less than half the high street price at the time for kit of this level, and works like a dream. It all comes down to the builder.. ;)
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Oh, I dunno - my self-built one here was less than half the high street price at the time for kit of this level, and works like a dream. It all comes down to the builder.. ;)
Which explains my absence in the BR over the weekend, as my laptop remained in Peterborough and I used my homebuilt AMD 2800 Barton to access the site. Or I would have done if it were behaving.
Methinks a stripdown and reinstall may be in order.
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PCs are badly made? They seem generally pretty good to me. Well, except maybe some of the lower end of the branded market. Mean time between failure is measured in ten's of thousands of hours with most components.
Like all consumer products, the emphasis is on reducing costs - isn't that what we want? But as with all consumer products you have a range to choose from, with quality attracting a premium.
When you think back to what computers cost even, say, just 5 years ago there is no doubt that they have come down in real terms. And, of course, you get considerably more for your money.
I'm not qualified to talk about hearing aids though...
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I\'m getting plagued with SPAM and viruses, to the extent that I think a lot of it is being sent by outfits offering anti-SPAM software. Does anyone know of any proper anti-SPAM software that isn\'t a rip-off and doesn\'t itself contain a virus? I know I\'m supposed to put this in \'I have a question\' but the problem is serious enough to jeopardise the site.
HJ
As this thread seems pretty well answered, moved to the \"I H A Q\" thread. DD.
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hj, try mailwasher at www.mailwasher.net
clip from site:
Introducing MailWasher, the easiest way to check and manage your e-mails before you download them.
MailWasher is a powerful email checker with effective spam elimination. Discover the safe way to stop unwanted viruses and e-mails before they get to your computer.
No gimmicks here, it is so easy to set up and use that you\'ll be managing your email like a pro in seconds. It can even be used as an effective privacy tool.
I think you will find this to be the easiest, most effective way to manage your incoming e-mails
#
YoungSei
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HJ
The best anti-spam system I've come across is the built-in system in the Mozilla mail client, which I think is now called Mozilla Thunderbird. As I say it's built in so doesn't give you any grief with added on programs and is very easy to set up. The mail client is free and available for Windows and Linux--I use it in both. Download from www.mozilla.com.
Good luck
Chris
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Sorry, that's mozilla.ORG
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Me too HJ, and this morning a new twist. Someone (not from here I might add) has spoofed my email account to send out huge volumes of spam and porn. How I know is that I am receiving a lot of "mail undeliverable" type messages which contain the sent messages.
This kind of behaviour really needs to be controlled or the internet will implode. Just how it can be done, I don't know.
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This kind of behaviour really needs to be controlled or the internet will implode. Just how it can be done, I don't know.
Microsoft Windows is inherently insecure: that's what makes it so easy to use and that's why we need all these add-on packages to keep it safe and stable. People need to learn that running server services (MS Messenger anyone?) is unsafe unless you are fastidious about security. They also need to learn that Outlook is a very bad and insecure mail client: the American Department for Homeland Security actually advises solving Outlook security problems by uninstalling Outlook.
So how can it be done? Linux: everything is password protected and you need the "superuser" password to install anything, so no spyware problem for one thing. But if not Linux then use alternative applications like Mozilla, OpenOffice and so on that will run in Windows and are IMO superior.
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I had this problem and solved it as follows:
1. Set the first address in my address book to 0 (zero). So if anything tries to send spam via my address book it's invalid and stops.
2. Use Norton Antivirus and Firewall (available cheap on Ebay)
3. Disallow Active X controls unless you authorise . Security Setting in IE
4. Change email address from old address -
5. If Firewall sees possible SPam. it adds Spam to header. Set mail rules to delete those.
6. Use Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-aware daily to delete all tracking bugs..(do a web search and you will find them - they are free)
Of all the above 4 is ESSENTIAL - but after you have done everything else first.
madf
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I had this problem and solved it as follows: 1. Set the first address in my address book to 0 (zero). So if anything tries to send spam via my address book it's invalid and stops.
This is a common misconception. It worked a few years ago but not any more. Use another email client so any Outlook-based virus doesn't know where to look for your address book. Even this method won't last forever.
2. Use Norton Antivirus and Firewall (available cheap on Ebay)
Grisoft AVG and Zonealarm are just as good and free to download.
3. Disallow Active X controls unless you authorise . Security Setting in IE
Good advice, but Mozilla (and I think Opera) has this as the default, has a built-in pop-up stopper in its browser and anti-spam software in its mail client. It also has a download manager so you can see exactly what you're downloading. Explorer 6 is now two years old and things have moved on.
4. Change email address from old address -
Pretty tough on a company address. A good compromise is Mailwasher, which bounces spam emails so it looks (to the sending machine) like the account is dead. After a while they dry up.
5. If Firewall sees possible SPam. it adds Spam to header. Set mail rules to delete those.
See above: Mozilla is free.
6. Use Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-aware daily to delete all tracking bugs..(do a web search and you will find them - they are free)
Not necessary if you're careful about what you download/install and have your firewall configured correctly. M$ wants you not to be careful of course so it can keep track of you. I was once curious about this so I downloaded Spybot and it found nothing on my machine.
Correctly configured wetware is the most important thing of all. Steve Gibson's site grc.com has lots of advice and some scary stories on this subject.
Chris
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I use AVG and Zonealarm, and Lavasoft to destroy unwanted cookies.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Quite agree Chris - Outlook/Outlook Express is the main culprit. I suppose to be fair to Microshaft (not sure why!) it's also the main target. I use Opera for surfing in Windows, and it has a built-in mail client that works well and can be configured to send unwanted stuff automatically to a 'Spam' folder.
One thing that raises one's 'spam profile' considerably is having a website with your email address on it (as doubtless applies to HJ). These get 'harvested' with the inevitable result. There are ways of encoding email addresses to get round this - I use one called (rather unfortunately) AssMaker, but there are others.
None of this will solve the problem completely, but it will help. I was encouraged to learn that even Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Web) gets spam!
Personally, I would like to see a few of the culprits put up against a wall and shot, to serve as an example...
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Thanks YoungSeicento. I downloaded the trial, but can't understand the first bit of the instructions, so I'm going to have to give it a miss. Could be I'll just have to leave things as they are and manually ditch the garbage. At least no viruses get through.
HJ
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HJ
What don't you understand? Contact me off list and I'll get you going. MailWasher is a wonderfully simple and effective solution. The ******* [self-censored] outrage is that the garbage can reach your ISP account at all.
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Spam is nothing compared to some of the other nasties out there.
My son managed to download a program from a London-based company called lop.com (it was 'bundled with Messanger Plus upgrade) - it has basically taken over the IE desktop on one of our machines. After several futile hours work trying to remove it, it looks like I'll have to re-format the hard drive.
In my book these outfits are just as bad as the virus-writers and it seems incredible that they seem to be left untouched by the law.
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If your PC has been taken over by spyware contained in a lot of "free" programmes or your home page has been hijacked, try Adaware (the basic one) free for personal use from www.lavasoftusa.com/ Very easy to use and it may save you a re-format. Another programme is Spybot - do a search in Google - it is freely available.
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It's worth persevering with Mailwasher if you can. It's a great tool for deleting spam from your mail server before it gets to your machine.
Theres a pro version with tutorials and a user forum at the following.
www.firetrust.com
www.computercops.biz/forums.html
JohnL
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HJ:
The only way you as a commercial operator can minimise spam is to force e-mail to come to you via a web-based form. Currently, allowing people to mail you direct is how you get placed on spammers lists. Many Companies are now going down the route of not publishing direct e-mail addresses and forcing contact via web-based forms.
Anti-spam solutions that are around would not suit businesses which relies on a public e-mail address.
For example, if you(HJ) look up my e-mail address, you will see that it is designed to be difficult to be randomly guessed at or generated by the automatic spammers. I get ZERO spam on that address, which I reserve for my internet activities.
I have other e-mail addresses that I use exclusively for friends only, for family only, for my banking/business only, and so on. Mail to these addresses get automatically forwarded to a secret address that only I know. That way, as soon as an address gets compromised, I know where the problem is, change it, tell the affected people, and remove the threat.
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oops. apologies for the bold above.
DD or ND - please edit - I meant only to put italics around \"you as a commercial operator\".
Done. DD.
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eMBe,
So a lot of mail addresses are picked up from webpages where our address may have to be displayed for legit purposes??
Is it enough to change these to something in the form... mm"at"xyz.com rather than the usual mm@xyz.com?
M.M
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M.M
I doubt that's the primary way, though it is one way. Most of this is unprotected Windows machines infected with trojans and "bots" of various kinds. A trojan can harvest email addresses from address books very easily and send them all to whoever wants them without the user even noticing. Of course in many cases it's the user's own computer that's doing the spamming (not some distant server) every time the user connects to the Internet. The wholly ridiculous XP firewall allows all outgoing traffic regardless but of course email programs are in the trusted group anyway. There is even an IT manager at a local school near here who tells the teachers they don't need a personal firewall, so there must be a lot of unprotected PCs on the net. And as broadband spreads...
Chris
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HJ - re web-forms and other anti-spam measures. See details at Kathy Kinsley's seb site, which sums up anti-spam measures neatly in a page. The details were updated in July 2000 but many tips are still current.
www.awebspace.com/web/safety/spam.html
..So a lot of mail addresses are picked up from webpages where our address may have to be displayed for legit purposes??
Is it enough to change these to something in the form... mm"at"xyz.com rather than the usual mm@xyz.com? ...>>
MM - again see the link to Kathy Kinsley's web page.
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Nice site eMBe though as you say a little (!) out of date on this subject. There is a new threat and this I think is why HJ is asking now. Spam trojans have only been around for a few months but I'm certainly seeing an increase in spam on my sacrificial email addresses since the start of the summer:
www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/3/6257/30997
www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,999221,00.h...l
Chris
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ChrisR - I appreciate what you are getting at, and I perhaps naively assume that most backroomers will be using firewalls and will have set up e-mail virus blockers that quarantine suspicious attachments. I have only ever had one virus - ten years ago from a floppy-disc! ( I am a bit paranoid about security/safety as I spent the first few years after graduating working in active nuclear facilities ).
I also assume that most people will have spent one useful hour testing and and then setting up their PC using Steve Gibson's excellent free resources at:
grc.com/default.htm
grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
This is what the first few words of his site say:
>> Late Friday, October 3rd, Microsoft finally released another cumulative patch for their often-exploited Internet Explorer. This patch repairs another CRITICAL vulnerability which has had the Internet security community quite worried.
Without this patch, malicious code can be downloaded into your system and executed when visiting a malicious web site or simply receiving and previewing or opening malicious eMail. Exploits of this serious vulnerability have been found "in the wild" so this is no longer a "theoretical" vulnerability. These links will take you to Microsoft's pages to retrieve the patches:
www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/MS03...p
www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-0...p
This is something you'll want to do sooner rather than later.
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eMBe
I have only ever had one virus - ten years ago from a floppy-disc!
Snap, from a brand new Win3.1 machine! Luckily it didn't seem to do anything but corrupt the boot sector of the floppy--my ancient Amstrad was immune anyway through decrepitness no doubt. But that's what taught me the lesson.
I've spent quite a bit of time recently fixing neighbours' machines and frankly I'm fed up with people not bothering to do anything to find out what their computer is doing and as a result ruining my day and filling up my inbox with nonsense. I don't assume they know anything about it because in my experience they don't care until something bad happens to them. In my opinion Windows is the main problem: the whole culture it breeds is one of "You too can be a computer genius: just click here" and there are so many unprotected windows boxes out there it's like giving a spammer/hacker free access to a server farm. This new approach is interesting though: can the spammers be sued if they violate property, or is the act of clicking on the .exe file tacit consent?
I came to Linux quite recently from Windows ME, which was practically a virus in itself. It's been a hard learning experience--everything is different--but it's really good by comparison even with Win XP (which I also use occasionally but no longer like much).
Chris
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postscript: if anyone out there has not gone through Steve Gibson's tests, and find it all a bit difficult, then at the very least you should try to follow through his guidance on closing unnecessary PORTS on your PC. For instructions, see
grc.com/su-bondage.htm
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This is really HJs thread but although not wishing to hijack it, I should make clear that the problem I have had is domain name (or effectively email address) hijack, which would have happened whether or not my computer was turned on. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Windows, my address book or viruses and trojans.
In it's simplest form, someone set up the email address on their computer as one belonging to someone else (in this case, me) and sent a load of spam emails.
I could do it here, so could any of you. All you need is the addresses of a bunch of likely recipients, which are easily obtainable both legitimately (some companies sell their mailing lists ) or illegitmately (by harvesting from forums such as these).
The worrying bit is that without a deal of detective work, there is no indication whatsoever of the perp, and by the time the "owning" ISP has been identified and tackled, the perp is long gone.
Not really sure what point I'm making, but having deleted well over 1000 replies to "my" email saying the porn emails "I" sent could not be delivered in less than 24 hours, I am sitting here wondering how many tens of thousands WERE delivered...all with my domain name (email address) on as the sender...
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Free virus checker, firewall, blocker and other freebies:
www.tinyurl.com/qm8u
DVD
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I'm sure it's good stuff, but I by the time I got to para 4 I felt that inevitable nodding-off I get when geek-speak pervades my consciousness. I wish someone would just say: load this program, never mind how it works or what it does, click on that, exit and now you can relax and get yourself another coldie, that's all you need to know.......:+(
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Phew ! It's taken me half an hour of site searching to find this thread. I knew HJ had started it !
Anyway, just to say I installed Mailwasher last week and it's absolutely brilliant ! If you're getting trouble with unwanted e-mail (My in box had 128 unsolicited (mostly crude American) e-mails when I left it for three days last week) , Mailwasher is the answer. try it !. It's free and I have no connection with the program or its author !!
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Badly made? Yes indeedy. Bin in the PC business since 1983. The first one (ignoring apple) the IBM PC was built like a boat anchor, and of high quality components. The first portable from compaq, was an engineering marvel.
I build my own PC's, and yes I buy the best bits I can, and the price is amazing for what you get. Compared to a 1.5 million pound mainframe tho the PC is made of rice paper. The average PC could be built into a matchbox if manufacturers were to employ the best available. They dont and is still mainly (yes I know about shuttle type boxes) big tin, poorly made. The average life expectency of a PC is now about 2.5 years. I am not knocking it, the quality and price is what I need for 2.5 years use (Well actually my rebuild cycle is now about 18 months junior on the other end of the home network gets the hand me downs)
Medical devices (like hearing aids) do employ the best design going, need to be high quality, and in relatively small numbers. Hence the cost.
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