I've gotten the odd email from you Russ, but afaik always just you forwarding something. I've had massmailers before as well. Funny enough my previous ISP was using ancient hardware that couldn't even monitor my traffic. Imagine my surprise when I have some angry guy in India telling me I'm a scammer... and the ISP didn't even know where to begin helping me.
Estuansis, What bothers me is Sam saying that it's a bot net, yet as of yesterday Micro$oft acknowledges the problem, but doesn't have a fix for it yet! I can pretty safely say that after sending over 600 emails to Europe in May/June, and having heard back from most of them with no complaints that it's not being generated by my computer. This problem started to appear a couple of months earlier than that, so it's got to be something in a growing number of friends computers. It's like I'm a carrier or something. I'm going to run MalwareBytes in safe mode and see if anything pops up! Best Regards, Russ
Here is a free botnet removall software, http://mice.org/blog/trendmicro-new-free-botnet-detection-removal-tool/ I haven't tried it myself, but TrendMicro has a good record.
It's not really MS' responsibility to safeguard against stuff like that, depending on what's been compromised. Most AV/malware scanners should sort it out, but that will only sort your PC out, it's up to whoever's spamming you to sort their problem out. Most of the time these issues will be accompanied with other problems/slowdowns, so usually they end up getting fixed.
Russ, the past three days I have been getting spam e-mails coming thru, when normally my AOL catches 99% of them, but the past three days several have been getting thru constantly, not hard to figure them out, you can easily detect they are spam and just drop them in my report as spam, it is unusual because normally I will get a spam maybe once every couple of weeks with AOL always catching it, but not the past several days. I did however have a big problem about a year and a half ago, one of my forums blocked me because they said I was a spammer, I could not figure that out, till I noticed I was getting e-mails sent to me using my own e-mail address, my own e-mail address trying to sell me watches, that's when I knew I have been hacked, this guy not only had my e-mail address but must have had my password also, of course I pressed the panic button, I contacted everybody especially AOL, this guy by mistake so I gather anyway started sending them to me. Contacting AOL of course we agreed on changing my password, which I did, after doing that it all stopped, I didn't change my master user name as that becomes problematic with AOL plus the fact I would have had to make changes to every where I surfed, a week later because I was till paranoid decided to change my password again, but this time I could not do it on my own, AOL would not let me, so I called again, of course with AOL you get these foreigners you can't even understand, plus they just read out of manuals, they almost sound robotic, they themselves could not help me change it, I always need to contact the main office meaning somebody here in the U.S. they have to change it for me, their explanation is my account is kinda red flagged and probably will be for the next year or two, however this guy got my password made AOL paranoid also and will not allow me to change it on my own, I can't argue that as it does gives me the extra protection although it is a pain in the butt getting AOL in the U.S. you need to go thru so much crap before you do, better safe than sorry. Since than no more problems till about three days ago, I have not been getting any no subject spams, just easy recognizable ones, and of course my antennas are up. I did quickly made some contacts with people I regularly e-mail with, all got back to me reporting no problems.
Russ, I sent you a message about a dead snake in a water treatment plant. Though the video you watch is a joke. The snake isn't dead LOL! It scares the Ba-Je-Sus out of people! So it sounds like you're untrusting of emails, based on subject line. Can't say I blame you there I've gotten emails that were DAMN similar regarding my contacts. Usually they're off by a character or two, or the address is all capslock. Haven't had one in a while though. They ain't fooling me! I notice those little nuances LOL!
everything is problematic with AOL. It would amaze me if there any customers still with them willingly, as opposed to being stuck due to the no cancellations policy.
My mother is still with them. I've pleaded, and begged with her to switch. But all her connections are through AOL. As fred said, it's problematic, and discouraging to even think about switching. I'm glad I did it before I delved real deep LOL! To make matters worse, she uses a 2001 gateway, with a 2.0Ghz pentium processor. My 1.4 amd thunderbird smoked it! It's sooo slow, but she just won't switch to her new build I did for her. I catch her using it more and more though She's slow to change. I try to optimize her PC, but such old hardware, with up to date software, it really is a never ending, pointless battle. Isn't it possible to keep the AOL email, without paying AOL? :S It seems like I read something a while back.
Well, that's the thing. Even though it's against the law, AOL's policy is never to cancel a subscription. In order to leave AOL, you need to manually claim a fraudulent fee through your bank and block their payments, then with phone line based services, have the line manually untagged and reset by engineers at the exchange. AOL do not cancel a member's subscription for any reason, and this practice has led to several lawsuits from entire US states against them, but as far as I can see this has not changed their policy.
I still know of people with them and they love them just like Fred, so what can you say. If it makes them happy so be it and if you try to get them to change, no matter how much better the new service may be they still won't like it, so it is better to just let them be bliss with AOL.
omega---is AOL the only mail service that wont let you export your contact list? if yes= google it, someone else didnt like it either and made an app for it if no= its personal preference and all the complaining wont help once you've export your list its simple to break the chains that tie you to AOL
I hate AOL. It's a resource hog, and simply unneeded. My mother likes it. If she ever gets feed up, I'll look into the possibilities of exporting her contacts and what not. Thanks
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LOL, OK Sammy, I knew I was gonna get bashed somewhere here just by mentioning AOL, look, we went thru this before, I have my reasons why I stay with it, I have seen to many people with way to many problems with hotmail, g-mail, yahoo etc. and when run into a problem you call who, best you can do is e-mail them, good luck with that, I don't pay for any AOL service, it's free, has been for some years now, thankfully I was able to talk to someone, you can't do that with many others, they solved my problem and even red flagged me for extra protection, you would have not gotten that with the others. As far as cancelling your account, that was the past, can it still happen, maybe, I have family members that have cancelled and went back and cancelled again with no problems whatsoever, do I have to put up with more pop-ups, more ads, yes I do, that's minor compared to what others go thru, I have seen it, I have tried it and no thank you, as we know it's all about personal preference. You guys aren't the only one's that jump on me about AOL, I get that everywhere, I pretty much just shrug it off, some of my freinds almost get into a fighten mood with it, hey should we put on a pair of boxing gloves lol, I get bashings from many, but like I said it really doesn't bother me much anymore, everybody has thier reasons. Kev, I just read about a case from Corsair on my Maximumpc mag. nice set up, probably not enough for you, but still a nice case, don't care much about the white color but no biggie, just a nice layout, here it is. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139005 Several months back Russ mentioned a case right after I did my last build, damit if I can find it, I got googlied eyed surfing the back pages, I fell in love with that case, I can't even remember what make it was.
I think you caught the wrong end of the stick there tbh, I wasn't so much advocating leaving AOL for a better ISP, rather, emphasising how much work it is leave them because of those issues, so if anything, if it's bearable, stick with it. And clearly you don't 'love' them because you've listed issues that are difficult with AOL (that aren't with other providers)
He loves them and that's fine it's his choice. Just because you find issues in something doesn't mean you don't or can't love it/them, nothing or no one is perfect.
Fred, I emailed the case link to you. I found it! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133183 Best Regards, Russ
Ahh, what a cute little case. It wants to be a computer case when it grows up Nah, it does look pretty sharp!
Oman7, I got a chuckle at how they do the front USB 3.0 with that blue wire that plugs into the rear USB 3.0 port of the motherboard. For my desk setup, a full Tower is out! The way my RC-534+ is, it's just the perfect height so I don't have to stand up to put a disk in the top drive. My two drives are right at eye level, so I can see what I'm doing. The twin docking stations on the top that can handle either 3.5" and 2.5" drives is a huge plus too! Russ