touch it. love it. use it. abuse it. mmmmmm.

Steveroni with Cheeseroni
I'm a computer expert.
Except that when I say "computer," I mean "roof and gutter cleaning."

What a coincidence - I'm also a computer expert.

Except that when I say "a computer" I mean "masturbating furiously", and when I say "expert" I mean "right now".

ifarkedyourmother

filter out the following subject lines:

Re: Thank you!

Thank you!

Your details

Re: Details

Re: Re: My details

Re: Approved

Re: Your application

Re: Wicked screensaver

Re: That movie


and any variations (multiple Re:Re:s or non Re:s)

blumf

omg! did i tell you i was an IT support technician or something? did i claim to be able to solve horrific techy problems? and now i have to prove my technical expertise to be able to talk to you? and that's not arrogant behaviour?

i tell you what, prove me wrong that you're not an arrogant git. show me that you can construct a sentence without calling someone lazy, or stupid, or slow, or an idiot, or without insulting their grandmother, or without insisting on proof of their technical knowledge before they can talk to you.

Maybe somebody could explain this to me--

I never download or run attatchments from e-mails unless I know exactly who they're from and what they are, but I'm still getting dozens of e-mails positively reeking of this Sobig.F shiat every ten minutes.

My question is, since I'm using Outlook for my e-mails and since it downloads all the mail from my mail server in order to let me look at it, does this count as downloading the attatchments as well? I never actually say "sure, download that there .pif file and save it right here on my system in the folder of my choosing" or anything like that, but the e-mails themselves are downloaded.

So do I not actually have the virus, and it's just someone else out there who has my name in their address book, or what?

Because if that's the case, then boy does that person suck. I don't even use an address book for e-mail addresses.

Edict, I already have the following message rules, but I was just wondering if I could actually get the IP's blocked maybe via my ISP. My mail account keeps filling up if Outlook isn't downloading constantly.

Apply this rule after the message arrives
Where the Subject line contains 'Your details' or 'Thank You!' or 'Your application' or 'Re: Wicked screensaver' or 'Re: Re: My details' or 'Re: Details' or 'Re: That movie' or 'Re: Approved' or 'Returned mail: User unknown' or 'Returned mail: Service unavailable' or 'Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender' or 'Returned mail: see transcript for details' or 'Returned mail: delivery problems encountered' or 'Delivery Status Notification (Failure)'
Move it to the Deleted Items folder
and Stop processing more rules

Dogfather, Jr.: Ha!

If you're seriously slapping around the old sausage sword to a computer virus thread, though, you need help.... and how.

shintaro - point taken

Given it's so easy to protect a machine from exploits viri etc...why doesn't it come that way when you buy it from MS?

Oh my God! You can't seriously expect me to believe that you're that simple?

Microsoft delivers you an operating system; it's just that: an operating system.

Microsoft has been trying to push their other products like, for example, their media-player, for years, by integrating it with their OS. This has resulted in loads and loads of complaints, since they are abusing their (virtual) monopoly in this market to push their other product... you are telling me that you haven't read any newspapers in the last couple of years... well, I'm telling you that if Microsoft even attempted to move into the anti-virus business, they'd be in big trouble.

What is it exactly that you don't understand?

...crap, though it looks like I'm *also* getting e-mails from other people's mail servers saying "the message you, (mes­ser­dday­mcom), tried to send had a virus so it was deleted and not sent, you jerk."

WTF? I have never ever ever ever downloaded or ran an attatchment unless I knew what it was and was already expecting someone to send it...

I repeat, WTF?

ifarkedyourmother

depends on your ISP. if you have access to any "spam filtering" options, they may allow you to add domains or IPs that you want to refuse email from.

Thanks zippy... It's a rare treat to come across someone that is susceptible to another person's opinion :)

geoff27

the virus takes an email address from the victims address book (among other files) and uses that address as the "return-path" address. so someone who has you in their address book is infected. let me reiterate- just because you are not infected does not mean you will not be affected. start looking at solutions like ifarkedyourmother and see if you can start blocking and filtering these emails.

Steveroni with Cheeseroni
Dogfather, Jr.: Ha!
If you're seriously slapping around the old sausage sword to a computer virus thread, though, you need help.... and how.

What do you mean? Doesn't everyone get aroused by the discussion of firewalls and virii?

mmmmmmm.... Sobig.....

2003-08-20 11:00:55 AM geoff27


...crap, though it looks like I'm *also* getting e-mails from other people's mail servers saying "the message you, (memyaddress.com), tried to send had a virus so it was deleted and not sent, you jerk."

Geoff27: It is extremely easy to fake a sender's email address. These people who're complaining about you sending them viruses are ignorant. They must've been under a rock for the past several years.

Using telnet and a SMTP (mail) server address, you could pretend to be the Queen of England if you wanted to.

optikeye
"Given it's so easy to protect a machine from exploits viri etc...why doesn't it come that way when you buy it from MS? "

This is a good point.

simple explanation:

To begin with MS didn't have a clue about the internet and as such it's windows OSs weren't made to be secure against suchs things. Instead MS focuses on adding features (like the ability to directy run programs from an e-mail attachment) which most the time helps users but also leaves a gaping security hole.

Now to fix these holes MS would have to break a lot of existing software (that is a program expects the OS to work a certain way, MS fixes a security hole which stops the OS from behaving in that way which in turn stops the program for working). MS could probably fix most of it's security holes quite easly, but it would cause so many problems with existing programs that nobody would want to touch the 'secured' OS.

What MS is doing, is slowly going through the flaws in its OS and closing them down. Each new version of Windows has a few more holes closed. However that will take near enough forever.

(see I'm trying to be fair to MS here, I could have easly laid in the boot to MS :)

Ugghh... Just deleted 10 more.

So I got hit with a virus and and I looked at it and and I looked all tough and and I said to it -

"You're not SoBig".

Cool, thanks edict.

Should I be disappointed that I never got it sent to me?

Hell, I never get any virii sent to me. I'm either special, uninteresting, or I never give anybody my main personal email address unless I know that they know a little bit about their computer.

Now, when it says that the virus is programmed to self destruct on the 10th, it means that the virus will delete itself and you won't have to worry about it? Or be self destruct, does it mean that it does bad things to the host?

geoff27:- As has been said, when the virus pretends to come from someone in the address book on the machine that was infected. Chances are someone with your name in their address book has the virus, and it has sent out a load of emails pretending to be from you.

TheDailyLlama
"omg! did i tell you i was an IT support technician or something? did i claim to be able to solve horrific techy problems? and now i have to prove my technical expertise to be able to talk to you? and that's not arrogant behaviour?"

And once more, DID YOU EVEN READ WHAT I POSTED?

I was assuming you had no techi knowlage, I asked you to show me where you, an non-IT person, was getting stuck installing a firewall.

Stange, you seem to be able to write but unable to read.

Ah, beaten to it. Story of my life today. I don't know what I'm doing here. In fact, I'm going home.

Ah, thanks too, Ant. Now I can write back to the one lady (who I don't even know) who curtly told me to remove her from my address book (which I don't have) and take care of my virus. What a coont.

Anyhoo, thanks for the tips. =) Now to get started on making some Outlook rules for refusing these annoying crap-mails.

A Mac virus? Bring it on, SquirrelWithLargeNuts. Surely some fed-up-with-mac-user geek should write just ONE?

I want a virus too. Four years of Mac usage without any anti-virus software and zip. Nada. What fun is this damn platform anyway?

Heh, thanks also jay_vee. I 'preciate everyone's reassurance.

Y'all just keep buying poorly built hardware running poorly written software and keep guys like me working making lots of money. Wonder why the Yugo isn't still selling millions... oh, yeah, they forgot that Americans (and others) are suckers for advertizing. Same junk, different marketing. Those that think it's that it's a 5 percent market share keeping viruses off Macs have no understanding of the differences between the Windows OS and the Mac OS.

/Sitting safely behing the keyboard of a G4 PowerBook.

I got an email with sobig attached last night. I hadn't heard of the virus, but as someone who remembers the days of DOS and Windows 3.1 fondly (remember when you could maintain your computer yourself without worrying about hidden files or corrupting the Registry?) I recognized the PIF extension as a form of executable and deleted the message immediately. I'm a little concerned that Norton didn't catch it give me a message that the file contained a virus; maybe it had deleted the virus already or would have when I tried to run it, but still...

Incidentally, as someone who moved from DOS to Windows very reluctantly and has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into every upgrade (I held on to Windows 3.1 up until the release of ME, never used 95 or 98), I have to say I'm extremely pleased with Windows XP, which came on my new computer. It hasn't crashed once in the month I've had it, as opposed to ME which crashed almost daily. I run a lot of high end applications (AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator and Macromedia software), often concurrently, and the OS releases the memory upon program completion like a charm. I hate to say this, but thank you Bill Gates.

Bukharin -- huh?

blumf you were assuming i had no techi knowledge? i worked in IT support for two out of the last three years but i personally don't think that having knowledge qualifies me to call people who don't know how to operate firewalls idiots. i read what you wrote, how about you now go and read the bit i wrote about you being an arrogant git.

Ohhh... now I get it.

I did manage to run a business for 3 years using Windows ME. Very often I would have two or three memory hog programs running at once. My computer was a Pentium 166 upgraded to a 500 and I was running the beta version of ME until very recently. I wasn't happy with the instability but I managed to get by. Just got a 2.4 gig machine and am as happy as a pig in shiat. I do a lot of architectural animations and files that used to take me 40 or 60 hours to generate are now done overnight. The only downside is that I can't charge my clients as much for the unattended computer time!

Just like BASF, we don't make the virus we just make it better.

/hehe

I'm working on a Mac right now....I have to restart it every four hours because I run out of memory....I can only have three tasks open at once (as long as those three programs do not include Photoshop or InDesign).

I can run Word, Notepad AND Calculator at once...cutting, pasting, math....you name it I can do it almost at the same time!

Sure....Macs cost a bit more.....
Sure my boss will never spend the cheddar to get me a newer Mac because they are too expensive.....
Sure if we had a PC network we would be able to have newer "puters" sooner....

But isn't it all worth it! It's the Cadillac of computers!

/Give me a cheap (and new) PC anyday

TheDailyLlama
"blumf you were assuming i had no techi knowledge? i worked in IT support for two out of the last three years but i personally don't think that having knowledge qualifies me to call people who don't know how to operate firewalls idiots. i read what you wrote, how about you now go and read the bit i wrote about you being an arrogant git."

OK, good, you read.

Now, configuring a proper, heavy duty firewall, with proper tools etc. is most certainly a job for trained experts, I agree.

However, there are pleanty of basic personal firewalls available that need little to no configureation on the users part. They are made exactly for the average home user. No expert training needed. As such, there is no excuse for anybody not to be running them.

This is not arrogance, this is just a plain dislike for people who refuse to do their part, the same dislike I have for people who drop litter or use a mobile phone whilst driving.

Think about it, if most people used firewalls and upto date virus scanners, ther recent outbreaks that have caused nearly everybody problems wouldn't have happened (or at least wouldn't have been such a big problem).

i assume you wouldn't like it if somebody let their dog crap on your front lawn, so why are you OK when somebody lets their computer crap in your inbox?

HonestIndian, you need more RAM. Same would be true of a PC, except it would run all your apps simultaneously, but thrash the hard drive.

Bukharin: I still don't get it, possibly because I'm descended from a drooling idiot moron of a grandma. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to transfer my betamax tape of Jill Hennesey DP porn to laser disc. But first...

"...Consumer Computers and Real Computers.."

Apple has been doing this with the iMac/Book (consumer) vs PowerMac/book (pro) for a while now with great success, though there is considerable geektraction in just the OS itself (which runs on almost all G3s and above). A caveat about OS X: If your bus speed is less than 100 MHz, responsiveness is barely tolerable IMO.

/1 GHz G4, dreamin' of a G5

Dinsdale, I know....but then again, my office supply "requo" for paper clips was turned down a couple months ago.

In fact....I don't know that I have had but maybe $20 things approved in two years...

It's not easy living in the Great Depressiio....I mean Iowa.

/lame humor

HonestIndian, let me guess, OS 9 (or as I call it now, OS Nein)? Extensions management is everything pre-X.

I still haven't received any infected emails with this. However I'm pretty sure someone I know has it because I've gotten 2 returned emails and 1 accusation of spreading the virus. And I damn well know I don't have it, someone must have my email stored.

Sobig terminates Sept 10th? Egad, devilish indeed. The ability to erase an entire temporal unit, no matter what the duration, is pretty impressive. I wish it could terminate August 20th as I've a hangover I wouldn't mind not having to endure.

/ prepares preposition by turning it on. Gah, I hate myself, that's why I drink.