Important Announcement

The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK

I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in it's simplicity.

Just received it from a friend.

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your e-mail address book, and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact, that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do: first, open your address book and click on "new contact", just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of e-mail addresses.

In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in AAAAAAA. Also use address [email protected]

Now. Here's what you've done and why it works: The name AAAAAA will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1.

This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA, It will be undeliverable because of the phoney e-mail address you entered.

If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phoney address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected. [At least, we hope this is the case.]

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an e-mail cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your In Box almost immediately.

Hence, if you ever get an e-mail telling you that an e-mail addressed to AAAAAAA could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it! Pretty slick, huh?

If everybody you know does this then you need not ever worry about opening mail from friends. Pass this on to all you friends.

Forwarded from Diane J

If you think your hotmail ID has been hacked, or someone has gotten hold of your password ......

Firstly encrypt your password to make it harder to crack, eg: most people use a name that is familiar to them, encrypt the password using numbers and letters like this example:- Bobby**12_ Forest *.

CLICK CHANGE PASSWORD

Microsoft and other industry leaders champion Sender ID as an initiative that provides a technical solution to help counter spoofing. Spammers use spoofing as their primary deceptive practice.

E-mail domain spoofing involves forging a sender's address on e-mail messages. Malicious individuals use spoofing to mislead e-mail recipients into reading and responding to deceptive mail. These phony messages can jeopardize the online safety of the user, and can damage the reputation of the company which seemingly sent the e-mail message.

Spoofed e-mail often contains "phishing" scams. In these scams, a spammer, posing as a trusted party such as a bank or reputable online vendor, sends millions of e-mail messages directing recipients to websites that appear to be official, but which are really scams. Visitors to these fraudulent websites are asked to disclose personal information, such as credit card numbers, or to purchase counterfeit or pirated products.

Sender ID seeks to verify that every e-mail message originates from the Internet domain from which it claims it was sent. Sender ID checks the address of the server that sent the mail against a registered list of servers that the domain owner or e-mail recipient have allowed to send e-mail. The Internet service provider (ISP) or recipient's e-mail server automatically perform this comparison before the e-mail message is delivered. If the Sender ID verification passes, the message is delivered as regular mail.

If the check fails, the message is further analyzed and the receiving server may refuse to deliver the e-mail, or it may flag the e-mail as a possible deceptive message. Depending on the recipient's ISP or e-mail server software, messages that fail the Sender ID check may be flagged and sorted differently. For example, a simple icon may be displayed in the message to indicate the failure. Or the message may be sent to the junk mail folder for the recipient's review, or it may be automatically rejected and deleted.

There is no single solution to stopping all spam and online fraud. However, Sender ID is a significant first step that many in the industry support to counter spam and online phishing attacks.

Thanks to Frank & Indi for this

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
A Peaceful Place	[email protected]