COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

My defences are a tad more aggressive.....

[Pluggy]

Probably involves high pressure steam......

[Tizer]

...and a bottle of bleach!

[Stanley]

Or even severe pain......

[Stanley]

I got mail from Talktalk yesterday morning warning me not to respond to mail purporting to come from them as it was spam. It struck me that they had been hacked and customer details lost but no mention of anything like that. Then, later in the day, THIS surfaced, they admitted that they had been hacked two months ago. No need for panic, just delete all mails that look as though they are from Talktalk, including the ones warning against spam!

[Moh]

I am sick and tired of getting up to 30 a day spam emails offering to marry me, sell me viagra etc (all seem to presume I am male) - these have only started since I got my new computer with Google as the (can't think of the word) - I used Firefox before. How can I stop them?

[Stanley]

Moh, I never get any of the common spam. Not sure whether this is down to Talktalk's filter or Thunderbird. I suspect it's Thunderbird that is blocking them. Perhaps someone else can be more specific.....

[Pluggy]

I don't think using a different browser will make any difference, you use webmail, so it's all controlled by the server at 'their' end.

I route all my email through gmail now (it wasn't initially because of spam, but because my own mail server had been blacklisted and some providers wouldn't accept mail from it). But since then I never see spam, I still get it, because if I go looking in the spam folder, its all there. It also put's the stuff from social networking sites, and legitimate emails sent from companies you're signed up with in separate folders. It reduced the number of emails I need to look at from 50+ a day to about 2 a day. You nominally use a new email address from gmail, but you can set it to collect the mail from any number of other providers and put it in the same place. You can set the return adddress to your old email address, so nobody needs to change their contacts.

I'm still anythingyoulike at stsr.co.uk, but its all dealt with by gmail.

The dowside of course is that you need to set it up which involves the messy pop and server details.

[Tizer]

I rarely get spam, we had a couple recently but that was unusual. It's all filtered out by my broadband provider, Plusnet, before it ever gets to me.

[Moh]

36 today!!

[Stanley]

It must be very annoying Moh. Has anyone got a dead simple action Moh could take? I would be baffled by the answers so far....

[Pluggy]

PM for you Moh.

[Moh]

Thanks - have replied.

[Stanley]

I hope this means there is relief on the horizon Moh.... These things are so bloody annoying.

[Pluggy]

I've sent details to your email address Moh.

[Moh]

Thank you - will get used to gmail.

[Stanley]

Thanks again to Canonical for 105mb of upgrades to the OS and Thunderbird. I note that one element of the Thunderbird upgrade was the spam detection system.....

[Stanley]

The upgrades fascinate me. I'm sure some are elements I never use. This morning it was 8mb of International symbols for Unicode, whatever that is. One thing I have noticed is that the latest version of Firefox updates itself as you are using it. It pounces on you and demands an upgrade while you are working..... No complaints, it is efficient and fast.

[Stanley]

Another 80mb of improvements this morning....

[Tizer]

Yes, we're getting the big updates a lot more frequently now, perhaps reflecting the greater pressure from malicious hackers. Talking of malicious types, we're getting many more scam phone calls now, often the automated type wanting you to press a button on your phone. Never do this unless you're sure that you are talking to someone safe. By complying with a request to press a button on your phone you are effectively giving the caller permission for whatever further action they want to undertake. They can then claim that you invited their attention.

[Moh]

Just out of interest I have just checked my spam box (don't bother looking every day like I did) and there are 509 since 4th March!! Will leave them there to be deleted every 30 days.

[Stanley]

I've never tried to view spam Moh, I don't even know if it can be done on Thunderbird.
I think you're right Tiz. I heard an item on radio about the way small retailers are being advised to take advantage of the capabilities of 4G mobile services. Things like alerting users of a bargain in your shop if they are passing. However, one commentator said that one problem providers were hitting was 'deletism', the fact that people are getting so savvy at detecting these constant calls that they automatically delete. They also gave some figures for the number of email massages that are never read, mass deletism! I suppose this includes Moh with her automatic deleting facility. My own attitude to spam phone calls is to ignore the phone from 10AM onwards. All my regular correspondents know this by now. The cold calls start at lunchtime, I suppose they are calculating that the recipients won't be busy at that time so there is more chance of a call being picked up. It makes you wonder how much of this spam content is out there on web and phones, it must be enormous and the providers will have to invest in capacity to cater for this. Good for their profits but is it bad for our service charges? It's a complicated world out there....

[Big Kev]

I've never tried to view spam Moh, I don't even know if it can be done on Thunderbird.

It's wise to check your spam folder on a fairly regular basis, the filter does get it wrong and legitimate email can be treated as spam. Thunderbird does have a spam folder, you can also "train" the spam filter to recognise what is and isn't Thunderbird Spam

[Stanley]

I didn't know that Kev. Interesting, I've told it to start learning!

[Tizer]

Stanley, look at the first graphic in Kev's linked Thunderbird web page and follow the instruction to get to that Preferences | Security | Junk settings page. If, like me, you have "When I mark messages as junk:" ticked, and "Move them to the account's junk folder" bulleted then you'll see any spam in the Spam folder listed down the left hand side of your normal Thunderbird page. If there is spam in that folder then there will be a number alongside it showing the number of messages. If there is none there then it's being filtered out at your ISP's servers, not in Thunderbird. Each week I get between none and a few spam messages, most days none.