If you were looking to employ someone, you’d carefully check their reputation and their references.  Email providers are now becoming just as cautious about who they accept emails from, in an effort to prevent large volumes of unsolicited commercial email (spam) from moving through their servers.  They’re turning to ‘blacklist’ services, to see if you’ve developed a reputation for being a known source of spam.  Let’s look at blacklisting and how it can put a halt to your legitimate emails. 

There are numerous blacklisting services on the internet, which use various methods to build up a list of known spam sources.  One such method is a ‘honeypot’ – pretending to be an unsecure email system, which attracts spammers and spamming software.  The blacklisting server then adds the internet IP address of where the spam came from, to the blacklist.  Email providers check this blacklist before accepting email and if the sender’s server is on that list, their email may be rejected before the recipients even see it.  This is different to spam filtering which actually checks the contents of the email itself.

Unfortunately, your own business can become blacklisted if one of your computers picks up a spamming software ‘bot’ or malware.  Like a virus, this malicious software installs itself onto your machine and starts sending out spam emails through your internet connection, however it may not be detected by your anti-virus software.  You can very quickly become identified as a spam source and blacklisted, which will prevent legitimate emails from being sent from your own local email server. 

The first indications of blacklisting are usually email failure error messages when you try and send a message.  They commonly refer to rejecting your email for ‘policy reasons’ and may or may not mention spam or blacklisting.  Email addresses that you’ve previously communicated with successfully may now start to reject your messages.

To tackle this, the first step is to confirm which blacklisting services you appear in.  Some services even provide a link in the email failure message with further information on why you were blacklisted, when it happened or the possible cause.  The infected computer then needs to be identified, removed from your network and thoroughly cleaned.  Your email server should also have its configuration checked to ensure it’s not an ‘open’ relay, allowing emails to pass through it which did not come from you and are not destined for you.  Once you’re sure your network is completely clean, you can ask to be ‘delisted’ from the services you’ve been appearing in.  Some services will action your delisting request as soon as they receive it, whereas some will take days or weeks and some services even request a payment to speed up the process for you.  The key to successful delisting is to make sure your computers are completely clean first.  If you make multiple requests to be delisted and you’re still generating spam, the services will start to ignore your requests and you’ll remain on the blacklists. 

Of course, a better option is to prevent spamming malware from entering your network in the first place, so always be cautious about what you download from the internet, what email attachments you open and what website links you click.  Talk to your local Computer Troubleshooters about how to protect your network or for help if you think you’ve been blacklisted.

Share on Facebook

We all get emails forwarded to us by friends and family that warn of a big virus coming or about a certain email that you shouldn’t open. One email claims that Microsoft will pay you money for each person you forward the email to. Any time you receive an email that has been forwarded to you by a friend, before you forward it to all of your friends, stop and check it out first to make sure it’s legitimate before  you send it out.

To check out an email to see if it’s legitimate, first, look at the email to see what’s unique about it. Then go to snopes.com and type in some unique keywords about the email and search for them. Then you can click on the correct search result and it will tell you if it’s true or false.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you get an email that says that U.S. cell phone numbers are going to be released to telemarketing companies and that to prevent getting a lot of telemarketing calls on your cell phone, you should register your cell phone on a do not call list by calling a toll free number from your cell phone. Go to snopes.com and enter “cell phone telemarketers do not call list” in the search box and click search. The top search result says “Cell Phone Numbers Given to Telemarketers”. Click on that search result and snopes.com will tell you what the claim is, it will tell you if the claim is true or false, it will give you examples of the email, it will also give you a history of the email.

Based on the information on snopes.com, you should be able to determine if the email is worthy of being forwarded to your friends and family.

Share on Facebook

When someone sends email, it can basically be in two different formats, plain text or HTML. Plain text means the message contains just plain old text and nothing else. No pictures. No colors. Nothing fancy. Without getting too technical, HTML is the same format that web sites are in. An email in HTML format means that the email can contain all sorts of graphics and special formatting. An email in HTML format can look just like a web page.

With a plain text email, there is no chance that an email can harm your computer. An attachment still could, but the email itself can’t. HTML format means an email can look great, but it also gives the sender of the email more power. Luckily, it’s not a lot of power, but it is enough to do some damage if you aren’t careful.

Sending an email in HTML format isn’t dangerous for you since you are controlling the content of your own email (hopefully). Receiving an HTML email from someone you know or a company you trust is generally not dangerous either. It is possible, however, that your friend sending you an HTML email could have an infection on their computer that sends infected email out on their behalf without their knowledge. The real danger is receiving an HTML SPAM email.

If you sign up for a newsletter, some of them will give you the option to choose if you want the plain text version or the HTML version. This option, however, is being used less and less. Most newsletters these days are in HTML format. In fact, this newsletter is in HTML format. That’s what allows us to use different fonts and colors and put the occasional picture in. We try to keep it small and simple so it’s easy to read.

Here’s how you can help protect yourself in regard to HTML formatted email.

First, just like you have to be careful where you click on a web page, be careful where you click in an HTML formatted email. In fact, don’t click anything in an email if you can help it. Even if it appears to be from a company you trust, it could be a phish attempt.

 Second, don’t open any attachments unless you are absolutely sure it’s safe.

Follow those two simple rules, and you should be safe assuming you have good security software that is not expired and is up to date.

If you are still concerned, most email programs have an option to convert all incoming HTML email into plain text. This makes HTML email safe, but it can make it hard to read your email.

In summary, HTML is the most common email format and as long as you are careful and follow 2 simple rules, you should be fine.

Share on Facebook

Most home users and some small businesses use the email address provided to them by their internet service provider. For example, if you have roadrunner as your internet service, your email address might be something like johnsmith@austin.rr.com.

This is fine until you move or decide to switch to a different internet service provider? Now you have to change email addresses. What a pain that is. But there is a way around this problem.

We recommend that you use an email address that is independent of your internet service provider. There are several ways you can do this. Once is to sign up for one of the free email services like Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail. There are lots more, but those are the biggies. All of these can be accessed via your web browser, but if you prefer to get your email in an email program, then you’ll be better off with Gmail or Hotmail because Yahoo Mail charges a small annual fee for that type of access.

Getting one of these free email addresses is easy. Just go to hotmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, or gmail.com and sign up.

Another option is to get your own domain name. A domain is something like google.com, cnn.com, or ct-cp.com (our domain). Notice that this email is coming from service@ct-cp.com. Ct-cp.com is our domain and service is one of the email addresses on that domain.

The interesting part is that it’s easy and inexpensive to get your own domain. Let’s say you wanted a domain for your family to use. You could purchase smithfamily.net, for example. Then you could have email addresses like john@smithfamily.net, sally@smithfamily.net, and so forth.

Even more surprising is how inexpensive it is to do this. To register your own domain name with us is $15. You do have to renew that domain name each year. To host email addresses on your domain we charge $25/year. So for $40/year, you can have your own domain name and email on that domain name. If you are interested in doing this, email or call us.

Share on Facebook

When most email programs show you your list of emails, they usually display the emails that you haven’t read in bold or in a different color than the ones you have read. Of course, your email program doesn’t know for sure that you really read the email. All it knows is whether or not it displayed the text of the email to you.

If you have a preview window turned on, that means that when an email is selected in your inbox, it is displayed in a window below. Displaying an email in this preview counts as having “read” and email. If you don’t have preview turned on, you have to double-click on the message to read the message.

Once your email program thinks you have read the email, it will change how its displayed in the list of emails so that it is no longer highlighted as an unread message.

Why is this important? When new email comes in, we tend to check it out but we tend to ignore all of that old email in the inbox that we already read. Sometimes I will read an email and it is something I need to respond to. However, I can’t respond right now for some reason. But I don’t want to forget. But since I have read it, it won’t be listed in bold and I might forget about it. So what I do is I tell my email program that I haven’t read the email yet. That way, it displays the email as if I haven’t read it.

You can set a message to “unread” in most email programs. In Outlook, you simply right-click on the message and choose “Mark as Unread” from the pop-up menu. Other programs work similarly but the exact wording of the option or how you select that option might be different.

For example, if you use Google Mail (Gmail), you click on the box next to the message to select it. Then at the top, click on “More actions” and then select “Mark as Unread” from the pop-up menu.

Share on Facebook

It’s important for all of us to be aware of scams. Some scams are very clever and easy to fall victim to. Knowing about these scams helps us recognize them and avoid falling victim to them.

So, without further ado, Computer Troubleshooters presents the top ten scams.

Number 10:

You get a message on a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. The message appears to be from one of your online friends saying they are in trouble and need money sent to a specified address.

What has happened is that someone has hacked into your friend’s account on one of the social networking sites like Facebook. The message you got was not really from your friend.

If you get a message like this, call your friend to make sure it’s really them before you send money.

Number 9:

You get an e-mail that predicts the result of a sports event like a football game. The next day, the prediction comes true. Over the next few weeks, you get similar e-mails correctly predicting the outcome of other football games. You then get an e-mail saying that you can purchase future predictions saying you can use the information to gamble and win a lot of money.

What has happened is statistics. These crooks send out e-mails to a large number of people with different results. Statistically, one of the e-mails will be right. Because of the massive amount of e-mails they send out, it still ends up being a good number of people who get the e-mails with the correct “predictions” in them. So they really aren’t accurately predicting the results.

Don’t answer, reply to, or send money in response to any e-mail and unless you are absolutely sure that e-mail is from someone you know and trust, or from a company you know and trust.

Number 8:

You receive an e-mail, phone call, or letter offering assistance through these hard economic times. The assistance comes in the form of mortgage foreclosure rescue, loans, debt consolidation loans, assistance with repossession, and offers to fix your credit rating.

Although there are legitimate companies who offer debt consolidation loans, most of these services are scams. Avoid them.

Number 7:

You get a phone call from someone saying that your granddaughter has been in a traffic accident. Cries for help can sometimes be heard in the background and the caller often screams as well stating that your granddaughter needs money sent immediately to cover the medical costs.

If someone you don’t know calls asking for money on behalf of one of your friends or relatives, verify before you do anything. Insist on talking to your relative or call other relatives to verify the story.

Number 6:

A customer wants to overpay using a cashier’s check and may ask  you to give the excess back in change. This type of scam is usually done for large purchases, not small ones.

What happens is that the cashier’s check turns out to be stolen or forged. Not only are you out the money for the product and the product itself, but the change you gave them as well.

If someone pays with a cashier’s check, make sure it’s for the exact amount they owe. If possible, wait to ship the product until you have money in hand.

Number 5:

You purchase a product or service either online, on the phone, or through the mail. What you thought was a one-time payment is charged to you every month. A related scam involves when you sign up for a limited trial and are required to give a credit card “for verification only”.

Basically, don’t give your credit card to any vendor without checking them out first. Type the name of the company into Google and see what you get back. There are lots of consumer sites on the internet.

Number 4:

You get a phone call from someone who says there has been a security risk on your account. The caller then conferences in your real bank whose representative asks you for sensitive information like pin number, account number, etc. The bank says everything is fine and the call is over.

What you didn’t know was that the personal who originally called was still on the phone and heard all of that sensitive information you gave your bank. Now the scammer has that information.

Number 3:

You get an e-mail with an attachment. The e-mail could say all sorts of different things. It could appear to be from a company or a friend. The e-mail may not even mention the attachment. You open the attachment and nothing happens. You go about your business.

When you opened the attachment, you infected your computer. Don’t open attachments to e-mails. Even if an attachment is a picture or video, it can be dangerous.

Number 2:

You purchase something on ebay or some other auction site. You use an escrow service which is supposed to make the transaction safer. Buyers send the money for the item to the escrow service who holds the money until the buyer receives the merchandise. Then the escrow service sends the money to the seller once they get the go ahead from the buyer. If the buyer does not receive the merchandise, or there is something wrong with the merchandise, the escrow service can return the money to the buyer, thus protecting the buyer from fraudulent sellers. There are many reputable escrow services, but some are not reputable. The fraudulent ones never send the money to the seller or return it to the buyer. These fake escrow services come and go quickly.

If you are going to use an escrow service, check them out carefully and make sure they have been in business for a while.

And the number 1 scam is:

You get an e-mail from a financial institution of some sort. These often tell you about a problem with your account, a security breach, password reset, or something like that. They provide a link to make it convenient for you to go to their website and fix the problem. You click on the link, login, provide the information asked for and you’re done.

However, the link that was in the e-mail didn’t go to your financial institution. It went to a website that was made to look just like your financial institution’s website. The login information and any other information you typed in is now in the hands of criminals who can use that information to steal the money you had in that financial institution, or use it for identity theft. This is called a phish.

To avoid this, do not click on any links in an e-mail, even if it appears to be from someone you do business with. When you get one of these e-mails, simply pull up your web browser and manually go to your financial institution’s website. Most likely you will find there is not problem with your account.

We hope this has been helpful to you.

Share on Facebook

If you are active on Facebook, you may get quite a few e-mails from Facebook telling you about what’s going on. Notifications like when you have a friend request or when someone writes on your wall. Did you know that you can change the settings and specify what types of things it notifies you about in e-mail. If you are getting more notifications than you want, you can change these settings to reduce the number of email notifications you get.

To change it, login to Facebook. In the upper right-hand corner in the blue bar, look for settings. Click on settings. When the settings page comes up, click on the Notifications tab. Now you specify what types of things you want to be notified about via email.

And while you are in the settings area, poke around and see if there is anything else you want to change. There are lots of things you can change.

Share on Facebook

Anyone who can read or write knows that a letter can be in upper case or lower case. A computer actually sees upper case letters and lower case letters as seperate things. For example, an uppercase ‘A’ is ASCII code 65 while a lower case ‘a’ is ASCII code 97. Computer software, however, can be written so that case doesn’t matter.

So how do you know when case matters? There are no hard and fast rules for every piece of software. It just depends on how the software is written. But there are some standards. First off, passwords are always case sensitive. A good password should have a mix of upper case letters, lower case letters, and at least one number.

Login ID’s are usually not case sensitive, but sometimes they are on some websites.

Email addresses are not case sensitive. JOE@NOSPAM.COM is the same as joe@nospam.com.

Captcha’s are the funny looking letters that websites often make you type to make sure you are human and not a computer program. These are not case sensitive.

Website addresses, however, are a little tricky. A website address like www.google.com or www.ct-cp.com is not case sensitive so you can enter it in upper case, lower case, or a mixture. However, if the web address you are going to has a slash (/) and then more stuff after that, that part is usually case sensitive.

For example, if you went to our website at www.ct-cp.com and clicked on the Newsletter link, you would get the page of our website that allows people to subscribe to this newsletter. If you look up at the address bar on your web browser, you would see that when you are on that part of our web page, the address is http://www.ct-cp.com/?page_id=72. This is a direct link to the Newsletter Subscription page of our website. The first part of it, http://www.ct-cp.com is not case sensitive. Th e part after that is. so the /?page_id=72 is case sensitive.

Share on Facebook

Windows XP came with an e-mail program called Outlook Express. By the way, don’t confuse Outlook Express with Outlook. They are two different programs. When Windows Vista came out, Outlook Express had not only been given a makeover, it had a new name. The new name was Windows Mail.

Now you may be wondering what e-mail program Windows 7 will come with. The answer is that it won’t come with one. But don’t worry, there are lots of options. When you purchase a new computer with Windows 7 on it, if you get Microsoft Office with it, you will have Outlook unless you got the Home and Student version of Office.

If you didn’t get Office, or you got the Home and Student version of Office, no problem. If you want to,  you can read your e-mail on the web. If you don’t like that, then there are a lot of great e-mail programs out there, and a lot of them are free. Our two favorite ones are Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail.

Just a reminder, although Windows 7 doesn’t have an official release date yet, it is expected to ship in time for the holiday shopping season, which is only about 6 months away. So we will probably be having articles relating to Windows 7 in this newsletter pretty frequently.

Share on Facebook

Many of us send and receive pictures attached to e-mail. But an e-mail can actually contain a picture embedded in the e-mail itself. Most commercial e-mail advertisements and newsletters are this way. These e-mails often look more like a web page than an e-mail. We sometimes embed pictures in this newsletter.

Most e-mail programs have the capability to block these embedded pictures and many of them do that by default. You might ask, “Why would I want to block pictures from my e-mail?” There are two reasons. One reason is that spam e-mail often contains offensive pictures like porn, for example.

Another reason is that an invisible picture can be embedded in an e-mail so that you don’t know it’s there. This invisible picture can notify the spammer that you opened the e-mail they sent you. This doesn’t allow the spammer to harvest any identifying information about you and it doesn’t infect your computer, but it does tell the spammer that your e-mail address is valid. And the problem with that is that once a spammer knows he has a valid e-mail address, he’s going to send lots of spam to it. In addition, he’s going to sell that address to other spammers. So the biggest reason to block images is to avoid getting more spam.

If your e-mail program is set to block images, when you display an e-mail, there is usually a button or link at the top of the e-mail message that gives you the option to unblock pictures for that e-mail. So if you get an e-mail from someone you trust, you can click that to view the pictures. Otherwise, they will be blocked.

If you don’t like that, you can change the options on your e-mail program so that it allows the pictures. If you do that, however, we recommend that you set your e-mail program so that it does not show a preview of e-mail messages.  If you turn preview off (called reading pane in some e-mail programs), then to read an e-mail, you have to double-click on it.

If you use webmail like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail and you read your e-mail on a website, then you don’t use an e-mail program. Most webmail will allow pictures by default but if you look at e-mail in your junk mail folder, it will block them there.

Share on Facebook