COMPUTER related question, not knitting but help! please

[VictoiseC]

Hi all. Well, my computer's been behaving great for a long time but all of a sudden, like this past week, I am suddenly getting a lot of emails with attachments from places/people I have no idea who the h. they are. Weird stuff. And also those pleading letters from people in Nigeria or Ghana or whatever about the inherited money thing... And banks ! I did a Spybot check yesterday and removed a bunch of suspicious stuff but then I got some more emails this morning. (with attachments that of course I don't open)

I know some of you are superaces re computers. Any suggestions how to keep these nasty intruders away from me? I use Roadrunner btw and the Spybot and Mozilla Firefox.

Appreciate any help!

[Rorshach]

Hopefully, you didn't open those emails, but I would go ahead and run a virus check just in case. you most likely won't find anything, other than that, see if on the emails if they have a place to take you off their list. If not, set up a blocked senders list.

[Silver]

Have you posted your email address online lately? Never ever post your email address. There are lots of tricks around it, but posting myemail@myemail.com is a flag for email harvester robots. They willl find it, and spam will come.

You said you're using FireFox, are you also using ThunderBird for your email?

[VictoiseC]

Thanks.... well I did a virus check yesterday and removed some stuff.
I have OUtlook Express as my mail server. I'm thinking maybe...
my niece invited me to this place called myspace.com and it's kids and junk sort of and now I'm wondering if my email got out there with that. Drat, I need a walk in the sun, stupid computers.

[Silver]

You should get Thunderbird too, since you're using FireFox. Thunderbird has a self-teaching junk filter that learns what you think is junk and what isn't. Once it gets smart enough, virtually ALL spam is moved to your junk folder for you!

[Aby]

Actually, it's roadrunner.. if you look at the designated address, most of them are going to different roadrunner addresses than yours. I have tampabay.rr.com at the end of mine and in the last week, I have gotten tons of misplaced email, some to me, some to other tampabay.rr.com users..

it's frustrating and ticks me off even more when I call them up and complain, only to get "yeah, that sometimes happens" ARE YOU KIDDING ME? fix it, dumbass!!!

So if that sounds like what you are getting, rest assured, it's your local roadrunner being a lazy bird.

BTW, my husband is a computer security expert and we have every possible copy of anti-spyware programs out there(it helps to use multiple programs since one doesn't catch them all) we have corporate Symantic antivirus, and we have one hell of a firewall including ipcop... and we STILL get this crap.

[VictoiseC]

Oh this is so overwhelming. Thunderbird, huh? I never heard of that Silver. Thanks, I'll look into it. Funny, my husband SELLS computer software but doesn't have the time to look into security.
Well, he tries, I'll give him that, but still, I get hit by these weird people or things. Appreciate the tips Roadrunner is being lazy?
Hmmmm. I think I'll write them tomorrow and see what they say!

Tanks again,

[ekgheiy]

Sounds to me like your address just ended up on at least one junk list. Once you're on one junk list ... you're on ALL OF THEM :(

My advice ... get two web based email accounts. One for personal correspondences and one for "web use". I actually wouldn't click on those "Unsubscribe" buttons because a lot of times those buttons only service to confirm that your email account is a valid account. Then you'll just get more and more junk.

I use both Yahoo and Hotmail. Yahoo has a pretty decent junk mail filter that sends junk mail to a "Bulk Folder" so that it doesn't reach your inbox. Every now and then I get some junk in my inbox, but for the most part, it's a pretty effective filter. Hotmail is excellent ... junk mail NEVER gets through on my hotmail because if you're not in my address book or if your domain is not on my "allowed" list, you will not be able to send me email (excluding MSN, of course. But don't worry MSN doesn't bombard your inbox. I get email from them about once or twice a month).

[VictoiseC]

Thanks Ekg... I hate to change my email after all this time from Outlook Express but if it continues I'll do it. Appreciate the help!

[ekgheiy]

Thanks Ekg... I hate to change my email after all this time from Outlook Express but if it continues I'll do it. Appreciate the help!

Outlook express isn't actually an email address. Outlook Express pulls your emails from somewhere esle. For example ... I have a hotmail account, but I check it using Outlook Express sometimes. So whatever words are after the " @ " sign in your email is the name your carrier. Depending on which service to which you switch (if you switch at all ), you could still use Outlook Express to check it.