News: The Spam Filter That Might Be

By | November 24, 2011
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 Yet another spam option: Starfield Technologies, Inc., sister company of domain registrar GoDaddy.com, has announced Spam Xploder which uses Bayesian filtering technology to intercept spam at the server level before reaching a user’s mailbox. Spam Xploder works with several e-mail programs, including Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express. Folk with Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, or any IMAP- or POP3-based account can retrieve and filter their mail via Starfield’s Web-Based Email or the Spam Xploder Management Client.
 
I for one was not impressed: I couldn’t access their website. Unless it’s a Net quirk, I’d counsel folk that they make sure their website is up and running before they release a product.
 

News: Something For The Folk With Too Many Email Accounts

By | November 24, 2011
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 If you’ve got a lot of email accounts, and access them from different kinds of gadgets, Danamail may interest you. It’s a new service that “lets you read and reply to all your email, from all your addresses, on any Internet-ready device, wherever you are.
 
 
Danamail consolidates all your email messages and attachments from multiple accounts into a secure, easy-to-use, single user interface. Danamail works on different platforms (Palm, PocketPC, WAP phones, Blackberry, even TVs). Might be worth a try. Basic plan costs $70 a year. Or you could just divert all your email to one account.
 

Update: Beware Worms Carrying Gifts

By | November 24, 2011
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 You’re probably heard of the computer worm that is seemingly benign: W32.Welchia.Worm targets customers infected with the W32.Blaster.Worm, deletes it, attempts to download the patch from Microsoft’s Windows Update Web site to correct the hole that allowed the worm in the first place, installs the patch, and then reboots the computer. All very nice, on the surface. But then the worm checks for active machines to infect by sending an ICMP echo, or PING, which generates a lot of traffic. That’s where the problem starts.
 
Symantec says it’s been receiving reports of severe disruptions on the internal networks of large enterprises caused by ICMP flooding related to the propagation of the W32.Welchia.worm. (Read: large amounts of unnecessary traffic that slows networks to a crawl.) In some cases enterprise users have been unable to access critical network resources. ”Despite its original intent, the W32.Welchia.Worm is an insidious worm that is preventing IT administrators from cleaning up after the W32.Blaster.Worm,” said Vincent Weafer, senior director, Symantec Security Response. 
 
In large corporations it will take weeks, maybe months to install the original patch. With all this traffic on their networks, Symantec says, those patches can’t be installed. What to do if you’re infected with the W32.Welchia.Worm?  Symantec has posted a removal tool. Use it. There’s no such thing as a nice worm.

Update: Sobig Is Back

By | November 24, 2011
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 Just when you thought it was safe to disable the antivirus software. MessageLabs reports of a fast spreading mass-mailing virus it’s calling W32/Sobig.F-mm.  The initial copies all originated from the United States.
 
Sobig.F appears to be polymorphic in nature and the email from: address is also spoofed and may not indicate the true identity of the sender.  It may carry the subject line ‘Re: Details’ and say ’Please see the attached file for details.’ in the text.
 
Attachment names may include: your_document.pif, details.pif, your_details.pif, thank_you.pif,  movie0045.pif, document_Fall.pif, application.pif, document_9446.pif. Watch out. It’s moving rapidly, a bit like babies across the floor.

News: Outlook Ex-press? Or Look Out Ex, Press? Or Press Outlook, Ex?

By | November 24, 2011
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 From the Do Microsoft Have Any Idea What They’re Doing? Dept comes another story about Microsoft products not quite gelling with reality. ZDNet Australia last week interviewed Microsoft Office product manager Dan Leach who said that Microsoft planned to halt development of Outlook Express, the email client that comes bundled with the browser Internet Explorer. Basically Microsoft seemed to hope everybody would upgrade to the Outlook collossus.
 
Fast forward two days, and scratch all that.
 

“I sat down with the Windows team today,” ZDNet quoted Leach as saying, ”and they tell me my comments were inaccurate. Outlook Express was in sustain engineering, but customers asked for continued improvement, and we are doing that. Microsoft will continue its innovation around the email experience in Windows.”
 

Leach was either on the beach too long, or customers were upset, or Bill intervened. Whatever, I’m overjoyed I’m still going to have ‘the email experience in Windows’, whatever that is. Still, I’d rather go for Courier, Pegasus, or even the email client in Opera. None are perfect, but they’re sturdy.