Virus Hacker Member Is Here

[Guest]

If you add these newsgroup to your Outlook Express there is someone here that
is stealing your email address and sends you viruses. Not just one but lots
under different titles and content. If my server had not caught them and
deleted them before I received them I would have been infected like 6 times
by now. I would advise EVERYONE here, DO NOT PUT THESE NEWSGROUPS ON YOUR
OUTLOOK! I know from experience!

 

[Rick B]

Not sure what you mean. I have many newsgroups in Outlook Express. I don't
use my real email address when replying.

 

[Danny J. Lesandrini]

I don't understand it at all either. I use a genuine Hotmail address that I've had
for 8 years, and as far as I can tell, I'm not getting ANY spam from newsgroups.
My Comcast mail gets pummeled far more than my Hotmail account, but I believe
Comcast is making money on the side selling it to the Viagra and University Diploma
spammers.

I think what he's saying is that, while you're connected to the Internet newsgroup
through Microsoft Outlook Express, malicious spammers are able to peer backwards
into the application DLLs and extract some bits that they are miraculously able to
reconstruct into a valid email, so even if you don't expose your email, you're not
safe when you use Outlook Express.

I lump this kind of urban legend with tales of Bigfoot and Aliens. Sure, they might
exist. Heck, maybe Bigfoot is an alien. I think your odds of having lunch with
Bigfoot are greater than having your email secretly extracted from Outlook Express.

 

[Gman]

It's certainly true that spammers harvest email addresses from NG's. I
have my own domain and I use a separate address for everywhere I
register. E.g. if I register at cnn.com I use (e-mail address removed). All the
emails just drop into my catchall account. That way I can keep track of
who's abusing my email address.

Over the four years or so I've been using this technique I've had no one
"leak" my email address (and I must have registered at hundreds of
sites). A fair amount of spam I get is from "guess" email addresses such
as info@, sales@ or nharr@ (no idea where that came from). The majority
of spam, however, is to an email address I created solely for use on the
ms newsgroups (ng_msword_vba@ I think it was) -- such a huge amount that
I just set up a rule on my server that deletes anything to that address
so I don't even download those emails from the POP.

Hotmail has pretty good spam filters so you would probably find that,
without those in place, you would get a whole lot more.

 

[Guest]

Ijust avoid the whole problem and use Thunderbird and Firefox. But as soon as
they become the dominant software for browsing and email, then the hackers
will target them.

Hackers are lonely "little" men (if you get my dfrift) who have nothing
better to do anyway.

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

I agree. I used to use a real e-mail address here. Receiving spam and
viruses was bad enough, but there are steps you can take to guard against
that. It was when I discovered that some low-life was forging that address
when *sending* spam that I abandoned it and cancelled the account. I will
not use a real e-mail address in a public newsgroup, and would not advise
anyone else to do so.

 

[Guest]

If it ever happens to you then I will laugh at you too and call you crazy!
Obviously you are an idiot!

 

[Guest]

Amen! Thank you! At least you are sympathic. One guy, Danny J. Lesandrini
said, "I lump this kind of urban legend with tales of Bigfoot and Aliens.
Sure, they might exist. Heck, maybe Bigfoot is an alien. I think your odds
of having lunch with
Bigfoot are greater than having your email secretly extracted from Outlook
Express."

 

[John Vinson]

Amen! Thank you! At least you are sympathic. One guy, Danny J. Lesandrini
said, "I lump this kind of urban legend with tales of Bigfoot and Aliens.
Sure, they might exist. Heck, maybe Bigfoot is an alien. I think your odds
of having lunch with
Bigfoot are greater than having your email secretly extracted from Outlook
Express."

USING OutlookExpress (or any other newsreader) to read newsgroups does
not put you at any risk of giving your email address to spammers.

POSTING your real email address, in the From or ReplyTo portion of the
Header, *does* put you at such risk.

You can choose to post your real address, or not, whether you're using
OE, Agent, Firefox or any other newsreader software.

By default, OE does in fact post your email address - but *that can be
changed*, and it's easy to do so.

Don't blame the tool if you're misusing it!

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Danny J. Lesandrini]

There's really no need for name calling, chicken little.

Yes, the sky is falling. Yes, we're all in constant danger of hackers worming
their way into our houses through the telephone lines, changing the settings
on our alarm clocks so we get up late for work. Before you know it, they'll
instruct our refrigerators to make super-huge ice cubes, that will get stuck in
the hopper, causing a backup that overflows the storage bin. Soon, I'll arrive
at home to see the garage door dancing up and down in an eerie ballet, all
because I use Outlook Express to read newsgroups.

Yea, I'm an idiot, but I don't suffer from Beautiful Mind paranoia.

I gotta go. Late for lunch with Big Foot.

 

[Danny J. Lesandrini]

Thank you John. That's the point I was trying to make, albeit poorly.

However, I will add to that. Despite the precaution, you may not be able to
protect your email from spammers. When Comcast took over ATTBI, my email
changed at 6:00 am on the day of takeover. By 6:30 I was pitched for Viagra
and University Diplomas. Why? Who knows. Either Comcast sold my email or
they sent me the spam or someone is just phishing for addresses. The point is,
it _wasn't_ due to bad internet practice on my part.

On the other hand, my Hotmail address has been in the public domain for over
8 years and the built-in spam filters are generally sufficient to protect me from
nearly all the spam. I get 2-3 per day, and if I read from Outlook it auto-deletes
them for me before I even get a chance to read them.

Now, can someone hack into my computer? Sure ... someone can, but not most
people. Those who can are probably more interested in hacking Chase bank or
the NSA ... not my server. Personally, I'd like it if they did hack my server.
They'll spend all night downloading my Klingon poetry and code of dubious
value for nothing, when they could have been hacking Apple Music Store and
have gotten something of true value. If I'm lucky,they'll f-disk the server.
I've been meaning to do that for some time.

 

[Gina Whipp]

Still reeling over the fact that BigFoot and Aliens may not be real

 

[Danny J. Lesandrini]

And don't even get me started on the Moon Landing hoax!