Opting Out of Email Lists
Earlier this month Messagelabs, a leading provider of managed email security services for businesses, reported a new threat on the horizon. This threat comes from opting out of unsolicited commercial emails (UCE), or spam, with a hidden link that can take you to a website with malicious code. This code attempts to infect your machine by uploading a Trojan in order to gain control over your system then use it as a proxy to send out more spam. According to Messagelabs, "This happens due to a Drag-N-Drop Javascript exploit that uses an Internet Explorer bug to download an EXE. file when the mouse is scrolled across the malicious domain page, allowing your machine to be turned into a tool that the spammers control." There are other variations of this same technique that may install Key loggers, which can record and send sensitive information (i.e. passwords and account information) to the spammers who are responsible.
So, should you opt out of spam? Well, usually if you know the company, and their half-way reputable, more than likely you're not going to have any problems. The sites you know are not reputable you should definitely not opt out of. Not only are you verifying your address to spammers, but they can turn around and sell your address to other companies which in turn send you more spam, or even worse. Not to mention you're also potentially setting yourself up to be infected by this malicious code.
Our advice is to simply get used to deleting the spam that your email filters don’t catch. You can also try filtering the messages by the domain name, but a lot of spammers change their domain in order to side step this technique (See our 6-2-2004 newsletter to find out how to do this).
http://www.worldstart.com/php/newsletters....html&06-02-2004
Another thing you may want to try is getting a second or even third free email address from Yahoo or Hotmail. You can use this email address for any thing you sign up for, or register online, thus keeping the spam out of your important email account. In our Computer Tips newsletter from 7-27-2004 we describe in a little better detail some more options, and good practices for handling email.
http://www.worldstart.com/php/newsletters....html&07-27-2004
Of course keeping all of your antivirus, and Windows up-to-date, and setting tougher IE settings can also seriously reduce your risk of being infected.
Stay safe out there,
Earlier this month Messagelabs, a leading provider of managed email security services for businesses, reported a new threat on the horizon. This threat comes from opting out of unsolicited commercial emails (UCE), or spam, with a hidden link that can take you to a website with malicious code. This code attempts to infect your machine by uploading a Trojan in order to gain control over your system then use it as a proxy to send out more spam. According to Messagelabs, "This happens due to a Drag-N-Drop Javascript exploit that uses an Internet Explorer bug to download an EXE. file when the mouse is scrolled across the malicious domain page, allowing your machine to be turned into a tool that the spammers control." There are other variations of this same technique that may install Key loggers, which can record and send sensitive information (i.e. passwords and account information) to the spammers who are responsible.
So, should you opt out of spam? Well, usually if you know the company, and their half-way reputable, more than likely you're not going to have any problems. The sites you know are not reputable you should definitely not opt out of. Not only are you verifying your address to spammers, but they can turn around and sell your address to other companies which in turn send you more spam, or even worse. Not to mention you're also potentially setting yourself up to be infected by this malicious code.
Our advice is to simply get used to deleting the spam that your email filters don’t catch. You can also try filtering the messages by the domain name, but a lot of spammers change their domain in order to side step this technique (See our 6-2-2004 newsletter to find out how to do this).
http://www.worldstart.com/php/newsletters....html&06-02-2004
Another thing you may want to try is getting a second or even third free email address from Yahoo or Hotmail. You can use this email address for any thing you sign up for, or register online, thus keeping the spam out of your important email account. In our Computer Tips newsletter from 7-27-2004 we describe in a little better detail some more options, and good practices for handling email.
http://www.worldstart.com/php/newsletters....html&07-27-2004
Of course keeping all of your antivirus, and Windows up-to-date, and setting tougher IE settings can also seriously reduce your risk of being infected.
Stay safe out there,