Advise

[Ramsey]

[Rico]

I would have put a smiley face on it, but based on your remark I mistakenly thought that you had a sense of humor. My apologies.

Rico

[Andy Dingley]

Now 4,000 and counting. However I've auto killed all but about 50 of the last 1,000

[J&KCopeland]

Once new virus configurations are well, known, I'm reasonably certain that some (many, most) ISP's might well do extactly that. But someone, somewhere has got to get copies of the infected code, break the code down to locate and identify exactly the code sequence that's the culprit, and then issue "definations" of that code sequence, and the administrators have to download and install the new "definations". Norton, McAfee and Dr Solomon make a lot of money doing exactly that. While this process is going on, a malicious virus can spread world wide, in a matter of MINUTES.

Are we talking apples and oranges here? I know of no ISP that will let end-users anywhere near their news servers. Normally, end-users have read-only access to the servers, and any filters and/or specific (anti-spam) programs are applied by the individual's boxes to incoming mail. (Perhaps there are ISP's that allow end-users to specifically configure their individual accounts on the servers, but it sounds like a great way for someone to screw up their mail and then blame the ISP, and since each user already has the power to create their own rules under any modern newsreader, I don't see where this would actually help much. BTW. The "bandwidth" has already been "chewed" up by the time the messages reach the server.

Look, my personal "Microsoft" worm count is now passing 200, so I'm completely in tune with the frustration expressed. And I've no doubt that some ISP administrators are probably manually deleting this incoming messages off their servers, like crazy.

Good for them!

Hmmmm. To be tactless, either your ISP allocates an extremely small amount of space per user OR you're getting helluva lot of large eMail messages. (BTW, I know this can happen. My BIL regularily sends and receives CAD files and those suckers are HUGE. He had to request, and was granted, additional storage space by his ISP. My wife once send a large uncompressed bunch of pictures, to several relatives. I was surprised that my ISP would let them out. But the relatives, especially the ones still on dialup weren't happy at all.)

James...

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

Jeez... I use Outlook Express, ZoneAlarm Pro, and Norton's Antivirus. I have made good use of Outlook Express's rules capability and as a result, I get less than 3 unsolicited spam messages a week. Not only do they not show up in my "delete" folder, I never see the rest of the crap at all. It's deleted from the server.

I've never had a virus either. I wish I could say the same thing for hardware meltdowns.

After having helped my father restore his system last week from a hard drive failure, I've now invested in external USB hard drives for the both of us. Drive Image 7 supports them (USB drives). I am determined never to have to start from scratch again.

[dennisvogel]

Getting them off my machine is the easy part. I can do that with Outlook Express. What I want is a way to prevent them from getting to the mailbox on my ISP's mail server. That's where they backup and prevent the delivery of legitimate email. I don't think Spamkiller will do that. The ball is in the ISP's court.

Dennis Vogel

[dennisvogel]

Your ISP must be running something to filter the spam and viruses. Or you've been very lucky. I run all the same things you do. They won't stop spam from getting to your ISP's server. They will help you contain and remove it once it is sent to your PC but not before.

Dennis Vogel

[dennisvogel]

Yeah, but once they break it down they can program the server to stop forwarding mail to people. Then even stupid people who open mail attachments that spread the viruses will be prevented from perpetuating the virus. This isn't an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus but rather to prevent the secondary effects of flooding mail boxes with garbage.

Arrgh. It's not rocket science to create a server-based program with a small client app that let's me set my server email parameters: don't forward email with viruses, don't forward email with "enlargement" ads, etc. No one is going near the server. Rules at the newsreader don't help. An infected machine somewhere is sending me 10 junk emails an hour. If I shut down my PC the mail piles up at the server. By the enxt morning my server mailbox is full and who-knows-how- many legitimate emails have been bounced. *Nothing* in a modern newsreader will solve this problem. It must be handled at the server.

Not the bandwidth between the mail server an all the ISP's customers. Jillions of megabits of crap are flowing cutting down on useful bandwidth for legitimate purposes.

Mine isn't. They tried to tell me it is something I should do on my PC. I tried to explain the problem but they don't seem to get it.

Yes, yes, YES! Hundreds of emails overnight. Don't know what the limit is but I've never had a problem until this crap started happening this week. Now you get it.

Dennis Vogel

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

Not true. Make your rules with the following action: "Delete From Server". Not only will you never see the spam in your delete folder, your pop server will get rid of them as well. You can do this; you're running the same email program I use.

So leave your mailreader up until this dies down. My computer is up and running

24/7/365. I seldom see spam. FWIW, I have my monitor power down after 20 minutes of inactivity; everything else stays active.

[Dave Balderstone]

They aren't hitting my mailbox anymore, but Spam Assassin is killing them at my mail server about twice a minute. Beyiond that, I've stopped counting.

djb

[dennisvogel]

If my PC is powered down, there is no rule any mail client can execute that will delete mail from a POP server.

Well, I have no choice but to do that. But I don't want to leave it up. My only consolation is that someone out there has had their PC royaly screwed up becaused of their foolish behavior. It's just too bad it's harming others as well. I just wish that (those?) people would disconnect their PC from the Internet.

Dennis Vogel

[Lazarus Long]

Sooner or later the ISPs of the computers sending this will notice just because of heavy traffic from their account and shut them down. It can't happen too soon.