Spam - Harmful or Just Annoying

  • Thread starter Thread starter C and A Bredt
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C and A Bredt

There are emails that are not getting through to my computer. I suspect it
is McAfee Total Protection's Anti-Spam. It is set to its lowest level. There
is an Anti-Spam folder, but they don't go there either. My ISP (Roadrunner)
is set to send all emails to me, so it is not them.

We are very careful computer users and do not open attachments.

How dangerous would it be to disable the Anti-Spam?
Thanks, CB
 
It depends, some is SPAM are just annoying, some contain viruses or trojans,
if your the careful type that doesn't open attachments from unknown sources
you should be pretty safe.
 
C and A Bredt said:
There are emails that are not getting through to my computer. I suspect it
is McAfee Total Protection's Anti-Spam. It is set to its lowest level.
There is an Anti-Spam folder, but they don't go there either. My ISP
(Roadrunner) is set to send all emails to me, so it is not them.

We are very careful computer users and do not open attachments.

How dangerous would it be to disable the Anti-Spam?
Thanks, CB
Click to expand...
Hi C and A
Disabling that feature of your antivirus software is not dangerous. Its
seems like away to just sort things by guessing, based on keywords or
something else.
Its not necessary to have your antivirus program scanning emails at all, if
your antivirus software is good, the scanning of your email is a redundant
scanning process that can interfere when sending and/or receiving emails
plus it slows down the sending and receiving of emails. Disable all email
scanning of your antivirus software. You should also check over the web by
logging on to your email accounts and see what setting are being applied as
to Junk email / spam and such, just to make sure some of the emails you are
wanting are not being blocked at the server end. If you do get an
attachments from someone you know and trust, before you would open it you
would save it to a user folder. Then you can scan it with your antivirus
and anti-malware software before you open it.

The links to a few web sites below starting with the first "Why You Don't
Need Your Anti-Virus Program to Scan Your E-Mail" start to give you a
clearer understandings of how to enjoy your computing and still protect your
computing environment.
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm
http://vmyths.com/faqs/
http://vmyths.com/category/type-of-hysteria/chain-letters/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/11/symantec_mcafee_settlement/
Google "McAfee email scanning" with out the quotes.

H Brown
 
You can't be possibly infected by a non-executable attachment. If you know
what you're doing you will open WHATEVER and even ATTACHMENTS, if you're
like me. I always know whether it's a hoax or real email, it comes with
experience and education (Engineer here).

if you get a message loaded with test.jpg.exe look you see an executable
filetype on far right?, so don't open unless you EXPECTED it from someone,
but if you get test.jpg and you're running modern Windows aware of jpeg
exploits, why not open?
Whats the wors tthing that will happen? Fake image will not display
properly, thats it, it caanot run an executable code.

BUT STOP, some people will be infuriated with this liberal advice, so why
dont you do this:

If you see suspicious email in Email client e.g. Outlook, OutlookExpress,
WinMail, WinLiveMail, whatever - get OUT, then login to the same email thryu
Web interface.
Unlike with clients like OutlookExpress/WinMail, with Web mail messages are
NOT downloaded to your local computer, and stay on remote server until you
explicitly save them.
Downloading however occurs when you run a client, so goto Web mail and open
that strange message, it's safer.
Still if you open attachment don't RUN it, check if it's executable.

Just save it to a removable medua, bring to a test computer losing which
would not be catastrophic, we have a special "lab animal" computer where
dangerous things are tested.

So save thaT ATTACHMENT, AND NOW SCAN WITH aNTIVIRUS (first update antivirus
signatures).

I coudl write on and on for ever, it;s pretty obvious...
 
It's not at all dangerous to disable anti-spam. You are still protected
by your antivirus. The anti-spam feature is just a convenience so
you don't have to look at all those annoying ads.

Are those missing emails available on Roadrunner's webmail?
 
No - they are not in Roadrunner. I had a problem with them a long time ago,
but now have their settings to pass all emails to my computer. There are
none stored in my folders there.
CB
--
C and A Bredt
It's not at all dangerous to disable anti-spam. You are still protected
by your antivirus. The anti-spam feature is just a convenience so
you don't have to look at all those annoying ads.

Are those missing emails available on Roadrunner's webmail?
 
It's physically not possible for your incoming emails to bypass
your Roadrunner mail server. If you did not download them, and
they are not on your mail server, then they were blocked further
upstream.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP (Mail)


C and A Bredt said:
No - they are not in Roadrunner. I had a problem with them a long time ago,
but now have their settings to pass all emails to my computer. There are
none stored in my folders there.
CB
--
C and A Bredt
It's not at all dangerous to disable anti-spam. You are still protected
by your antivirus. The anti-spam feature is just a convenience so
you don't have to look at all those annoying ads.

Are those missing emails available on Roadrunner's webmail?
Click to expand...
 
Sorry if I confused you. I did not mean that they bypass the server. I meant
that I have tthe server's options set to not retain any emails, but to pass
them to me without filtering out those that it thinks are spam.

CB

--
C and A Bredt
It's physically not possible for your incoming emails to bypass
your Roadrunner mail server. If you did not download them, and
they are not on your mail server, then they were blocked further
upstream.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP (Mail)


C and A Bredt said:
No - they are not in Roadrunner. I had a problem with them a long time
ago,
but now have their settings to pass all emails to my computer. There are
none stored in my folders there.
CB
--
C and A Bredt
It's not at all dangerous to disable anti-spam. You are still protected
by your antivirus. The anti-spam feature is just a convenience so
you don't have to look at all those annoying ads.

Are those missing emails available on Roadrunner's webmail?
Click to expand...
 
Although you can tell some servers to allow downloading of
all mail including spam, the server does not send the emails *to*
you; instead, your email program has to *pull* them off the server.
If your email program does not pull the emails off the server, those
emails will remain on the server and will be accessible via webmail.

--
Gary VanderMolen, MS-MVP (Mail)


C and A Bredt said:
Sorry if I confused you. I did not mean that they bypass the server. I meant
that I have tthe server's options set to not retain any emails, but to pass
them to me without filtering out those that it thinks are spam.

CB

--
C and A Bredt
It's physically not possible for your incoming emails to bypass
your Roadrunner mail server. If you did not download them, and
they are not on your mail server, then they were blocked further
upstream.
Click to expand...
 
Not true. It is not likely to happen because all known vulnerabilities have
been disabled but there are a few file types such as jpeg that are not
executable but that can contain executable code. Anything such as that is
not likely to occur in WinMail; such a thing would be caught and disabled
quickly, but it can happen theoretically. The chance of it happening is very
slim but it is a good reason for keeping current using Windows Updates and
keeping the antivirus current.
 
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