don't open that MS email

"Monique Y. Herman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!

I love my Norton's Utilities.

i recieved it too, but was skeptical of a few things. so i went to the MS update page, and found out
that there is no 'September 2003 Cumulative Patch.'

"deluxe" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Monique Y. Herman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!

I love my Norton's Utilities.

"ckretsorse" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

i recieved it too, but was skeptical of a few things. so i went to the MS update page, and found
out that there is no 'September 2003 Cumulative Patch.'

It's not very likely they would distribute it via mass email anyway.

The funny thing is the *only* email account that I have that gets those is my Microsoft Hotmail
account. All the others have presumeably figured out how to filter-out bogus spam-virus messages
from a spoofed Microsoft address. Hotmail detects most or all of them as junk mail, but that still
means they fill up a lot of my mailbox.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:40:03 -0700, David <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

"ckretsorse" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

i recieved it too, but was skeptical of a few things. so i went to the MS update page, and found
out that there is no 'September 2003 Cumulative Patch.'

It's not very likely they would distribute it via mass email anyway.

The funny thing is the *only* email account that I have that gets those is my Microsoft Hotmail
account. All the others have presumeably figured out how to filter-out bogus spam-virus messages
from a spoofed Microsoft address. Hotmail detects most or all of them as junk mail, but that still
means they fill up a lot of my mailbox.

My email host has the option of allowing them to filter spam, but it's all or nothing -- either they
bounce all spammish email or you receive it all. I'd rather have them dump suspicious email into a
"holding pen," but no such option. I do have them generate spam flags through SpamAssassin, but they
only let you filter based on certain headers, and that's not one of them ... grr ...

I'm tempted to switch from my current imap setup to pop, and use procmail on the receiving end, but
there are other downsides to that. Ah, well.

I called my dad to warn him about this latest scam, and he had some pretty insightful words for a
non-computer-dude. He said, "I don't click on that stuff anymore. I know that I'm too insignificant
for a big company like Microsoft to bother sending me personal emails." I was so proud of him!

--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

Monique the Geek says:

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

I'm happy to be a retrogrouch these days MS have said that there are no new patches for Win98, so
anything that purports to be a patch is not for me. ;-)

Steve

Microsoft will NEVER send a file attachment to you personally. Anything they want you to download is
via their website so if you ever get an attachment from "microsoft" it's bogus.

Michael

"Monique Y. Herman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!
--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

"Michael Paul" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Microsoft will NEVER send a file attachment to you personally. Anything they want you to download
is via their website so if you ever get an attachment from "microsoft" it's bogus.

Oh yeah, top-poster? Then what about that $5,000 I'm supposed to get from Bill Gates for forwarding
that e-mail four years ago and letting him "track" it?!?

Bill "now 'splain THAT" S.

PS: You riding anywhere Saturday???

Monique Y. Herman said:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:40:03 -0700, David <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

"ckretsorse" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

i recieved it too, but was skeptical of a few things. so i went to the MS update page, and found
out that there is no 'September 2003 Cumulative Patch.'

It's not very likely they would distribute it via mass email anyway.

The funny thing is the *only* email account that I have that gets those is my Microsoft Hotmail
account. All the others have presumeably figured out how to filter-out bogus spam-virus messages
from a spoofed Microsoft address. Hotmail detects most or all of them as junk mail, but that
still means they fill up a lot of my mailbox.

My email host has the option of allowing them to filter spam, but it's all or nothing -- either
they bounce all spammish email or you receive it all. I'd rather have them dump suspicious email
into a "holding pen," but no such option. I do have them generate spam flags through SpamAssassin,
but they only let you filter based on certain headers, and that's not one of them ... grr ...

I'm tempted to switch from my current imap setup to pop, and use procmail on the receiving end,
but there are other downsides to that. Ah, well.

I called my dad to warn him about this latest scam, and he had some pretty insightful words for a
non-computer-dude. He said, "I don't click on that stuff anymore. I know that I'm too
insignificant for a big company like Microsoft to bother sending me personal emails." I was so
proud of him!

you could always try spamihilaitor that tends to filter most of the spam i get
--
--
Chris Moore is a [censored]!

Monique Y. Herman said:

My email host has the option of allowing them to filter spam, but it's all or nothing -- either
they bounce all spammish email or you receive it all. I'd rather have them dump suspicious email
into a "holding pen," but no such option.

Why not download all headers and run your own holding pen. Yes, it still means you have to download
the spam in the first place, but at least it doesn't fill your inbox and you can play with filters.

Quoted message said:

I'm tempted to switch from my current imap setup to pop, and use procmail on the receiving end,
but there are other downsides to that. Ah, well.

Don't know a huge amount about this area (I don't get spam 🙂, but have you looked at the latest
Bayesian filter stuff?

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 23:29:58 +0200, bomba <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

Monique Y. Herman said:

My email host has the option of allowing them to filter spam, but it's all or nothing -- either
they bounce all spammish email or you receive it all. I'd rather have them dump suspicious email
into a "holding pen," but no such option.

Why not download all headers and run your own holding pen. Yes, it still means you have to
download the spam in the first place, but at least it doesn't fill your inbox and you can play
with filters.

I think we're running into the "I'm not sure how to do that properly, and the amount of spam I get
hasn't hit my pain threshold yet" territory. I imagine I would have to basically write my own custom
IMAP client to do this?

I mean, I can tell with 99.9% accuracy that something is spam just by the subject field ... and
spamassassin makes it even easier by sticking (UCE) in the subject for me ...

Okay, what I really need to do is stop whining, because I know damn well that if I set up something
to filter all suspected spam into another mailbox, I'll still go look at it every time I get new
mail, just to make sure it's not something I actually wanted ...

So I'll shut up now =)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I'm tempted to switch from my current imap setup to pop, and use procmail on the receiving end,
but there are other downsides to that. Ah, well.

Don't know a huge amount about this area (I don't get spam 🙂, but have you looked at the latest
Bayesian filter stuff?

I hear it's awesome ...

--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

Monique Y. Herman scrawled in bright red lipstick:

Quoted message said:

Okay, what I really need to do is stop whining, because I know damn well that if I set up
something to filter all suspected spam into another mailbox, I'll still go look at it every time I
get new mail, just to make sure it's not something I actually wanted ...

So I'll shut up now =)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I'm tempted to switch from my current imap setup to pop, and use procmail on the receiving end,
but there are other downsides to that. Ah, well.

Don't know a huge amount about this area (I don't get spam 🙂, but have you looked at the latest
Bayesian filter stuff?

I hear it's awesome ...

if you are running XP you know that you update automatically and that MS doens't send stuff to you.
But maybe the Unix geeks don't know that.

Penny

Monique Y. Herman said:

I think we're running into the "I'm not sure how to do that properly, and the amount of spam I get
hasn't hit my pain threshold yet" territory.

600-700 spam per *day* here.

Spamkiller from McAffee works just fine.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:36:50 -0700, Penny S <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

if you are running XP you know that you update automatically and that MS doens't send stuff to
you. But maybe the Unix geeks don't know that.

Penny

I run a win2k box at home -- I just don't care for xp. Anyway, yes, you *can* set your machine to
automatically update for you, but I *always* disable that and run the update manually from time to
time. I sure as hell don't want MS putting random [censored] on my machine because *they* think I need it.
("ooh, you know you want 47 language packs, right? Right!"😉 Especially with their history of
sneaking weird terms into their upgrade licenses ...

I patch my linux boxes fairly regularly, too, of course. And we have a router that firewalls our
home network from the rest of the world, so we're limiting the paths through which someone could
attack our machines.

Most unix geeks probably do know about windows update. I doubt most home users of MS Windows do,
though. And since most users run with Admin priveleges, they can very easily run nasty programs that
will hose their system files. There are also a lot of home users who don't have always-on
connections; auto-updates wouldn't work for them. In fact, patches in general are a huge burden to
them, since most of them would take hours to days to download.

One sure indicator that this spam is fake -- the "patch" is only 140KB. I don't think I've ever seen
a Microsoft patch that small =P

--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:39:56 -0700, P e t e F a g e r l i n <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

Monique Y. Herman said:

I think we're running into the "I'm not sure how to do that properly, and the amount of spam I get
hasn't hit my pain threshold yet" territory.

600-700 spam per *day* here.

Spamkiller from McAffee works just fine.

Ughh.

--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

Monique Y. Herman scrawled in bright red lipstick:

Quoted message said:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:36:50 -0700, Penny S <[email hidden]> penned:

Quoted message said:

if you are running XP you know that you update automatically and that MS doens't send stuff to
you. But maybe the Unix geeks don't know that.

Penny

I run a win2k box at home -- I just don't care for xp. Anyway, yes, you *can* set your machine to
automatically update for you, but I *always* disable that and run the update manually from time to
time. I sure as hell don't want MS putting random [censored] on my machine because *they* think I need
it. ("ooh, you know you want 47 language packs, right? Right!"😉 Especially with their history of
sneaking weird terms into their upgrade licenses ...

I get them automatically but I don't install them automatically. Some times the patches are worse
than the problem. You can select what you DO want to install, but you know that.

Penny

"Monique Y. Herman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!
--
monique

My pointless ramblings: bounceswoosh.orgindex.phpOpen ↗

for those that are interested, check out the details here:
"]http:[email hidden]

Michael

Monique Y. Herman said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!

I opened it just to be cute. I run Linux for all Interneting.

--
--
Lynn Wallace xmission.com~lawallOpen ↗ "I'm not proud. We really haven't done everything we
could to protect our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security." --Microsoft VP in
charge of Windows OS Development, Brian Valentine.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 20:02:54 +0000, Monique Y. Herman did issue forth:

Quoted message said:

I'm sure you all know this, but if you get an email supposedly from "Microsoft support" or
some-such, just delete it. The thing contains a "patch" (so far all the ones I've received have
been 140k attachments) that they'd like you to run to "fix" exploits.

It's not from microsoft. It's not a patch. Don't run it.

The damn things are spamming my account!

I wondering if it's someone here. This is the only group that I regularly post on, and I've had
about 10 of the buggers arrive today, in my throwaway Usenet e-mail address.

Own up, who isn't running antivirus software?

Huw

Huw Pritchard said:

I wondering if it's someone here. This is the only group that I regularly post on, and I've had
about 10 of the buggers arrive today, in my throwaway Usenet e-mail address.

I've just received a couple too, and a quick dig through the headers shows who's responsible. I sent
them a mail telling them they're infected.

Quoted message said:

Own up, who isn't running antivirus software?

*cough* aRe *cough*

--
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