My e-mail policy

G

Grayfox

New member
I am posting this in regard to an e-mail I recieved today which spooked me a bit. Someone, presumably from TFL, sent me an e-mail titled "9MM or 40 S&W?". Since the title was gun related I opened it. When I did, I found a short message in about size 24 font concerning something on which my opinion is well known to regular TFL members. Add the that the fact that there were a number of misspelled words and the whole thing just didn't look right.
Frankly, It spooked me. I immediatly deleted the message and ran a virus scan. Thankfully it came up clean. Sorry to say that I got in a hurry and didn't note the senders address except that I did not recognize it.

I am always happy to recieve e-mail from TFL members and if I can offer advise to the many new shooters out there, I will be glad to answer your questions. However, last year I was severly bitten by an e-mail transmitted virus. I'm a bit gunshy, if you know what I mean.

Therefore it is my personal policy to delete unread any e-mail that has a name, address or subect I do not recognize. If you wish to contact me, by all means do so as I'd be happy to hear from you. But, PLEASE, make sure I will know who sent it from either the name, address or subject title. Otherwise you will not get an answer. I think this is a reasonable precaution and suggest everyone adopt a similar policy.

If the person who sent me that questionable e-mail is a member of TFL who was merely seeking my opinion, I offer my apologies. Feel free to send it again with info which will have me to open it and I will be happy to reply.

I apologize for taking up space on this board to post a personal message. However, I just didn't know any other way to get this info out.
 
Grayfox, just to let you know you don't need to worry about opening an email. Viruses cannot be sent that way. If, however, there is ANY sort of attachment to the email that requires you to open it, DO NOT. I don't care if it is .EXE, .WAV, .JPG, dot anything, don't open it. I do not open these even from people I know. The Melissa virus used the address book from people using IE to send the attachments. You would see someone you knew and think it was okay to open it. Just don't open anything, but read the email to your hearts content.
 
Grayf-
If the message is still in your trash bin, please forward it to me. I suspect that it was a newbie who doesn't understand that this is not an email list. I get so many emailed questions that I've composed a standard reply for cut and paste.

Some examples:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Where can i find an extractor for the mini markX 223? Thank you.

I TRyED TO REGISTER OVER THE WEEKEND
BUTN NO RESPONSE - GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!

where can i find the uzi eagle on the net. ............. i have tried every thing and cant find it anywhere..... i even went to the name of the
company ......... EAGLE AMERICA INC.[/quote]

These are just from the weekend.
Rich
 
There's no problem with reading an email, even if you don't know the sender.

If you're worried about viruses, the problem is with _attachments_, not the message itself.
 
Another thing to consider doing is to get some of those colored floppies, red works good, and save any SPAM, any offending e-mails, any anon-mails with attachents, and any threatening e-mails to the floppy. Then delete and purge them from your hard disk.

You now have a record backup.

[This message has been edited by Ground Level (edited September 09, 1999).]
 
Thanks for the advice folks. Guns I know, computers are a real mystery to me.
I don't mind getting e-mail from TFL members, In fact I rather enjoy it. That goes for newbies too. I figure those of us who have been shooting for a long time owe it to our sport to help newbies out as much as possible. I just want to know who sent it before I open it.

Ground Level, I haven't gotten any threats, but your idea sounds good and I'll keep it mind if something like that should ever come up.

BTW: my computer has been doing some weird things lately and the problem is getting worse. A good friend of mine is a computer wiz and he's going to try to help me out this weekend, provided this thing lasts that long. He suspects that a fragment of that virus I mentioned earlier my still be in there and has started to mess with things. We may have to purge and reformat. So you see why I'm a bit paranoid about viruses.
At any rate, If I should disappear for a while and fail to answer e-mail, you'll know what happened.
 
If you really want to be safe about your email, be sure to turn off HTML coding. I suppose it's possible that someone can plant some virus via java and send that through. However, turning your e-mail to plain text would make even this speculation moot.

And once again, always scan all attached files. And even then, if the origins are questionable, nuke it.
 
Oh and about your computer acting funny? Would you like to elaborate? Maybe somebody on here can help as well?

As for me, my #1 weapon of choice against any suspicious hard drives is none other than FDISK! :) Kinda overkill, but hey, I like it. And obviously, I don't do it often. But thanks to mass storage via CD-ROMs, it's not too hard to recover. And even removeable media storages such as Iomega are cheap nowadays, making recovering even less painful... assuming you are careful with it in the first place.

Oooh, I'm rambling. Anyways, good luck. :)
 
First off, ya gotta remember that I'm electronicly challanged. Computers just ain't my thing. If it wasn't for TFL, I probably wouldn't spend two hours a week on the thing.
What it does is sometimes it will suddenly slow down, I mean really crawl. It also will have programs suddenly stop responding and nothing works. Sometimes you can get out with the old three finger salute (yeah, I have learned that one) and sometimes you just have to turn it off. This has even happened with the screen saver and shut down. Now that's a real pain in the butt when shut down suddenly stops in its tracks.
I ran scandisk and defrag and keep getting messages saying they had to start over and over because some program was writing to the hard drive? Nothing else was running or at least wasn't supposed to be. All of these problems are getting more frequent every day.
Like I said, my friend is a real wiz with computers and he's coming over this weekend to try to cure it.
But don't let that stop you, any input would be appreciated!

SB, just to show how computer dumb I am, I have absolutly no idea what FDISK is.

[This message has been edited by Grayfox (edited September 09, 1999).]
 
Grayfox,

That's Microsoft for you (all the crashes). My computer also gave me the same message you mentioned, when I defragged or w/ scandisk. I figured out that my screen saver program was set to start after 5 minutes, and that was what was causing the problem. When I know I'm going to defrag, I set ScreenPaver to come on in 60 minutes. (I have a REAL slow processor...) :( So you might want to check when your screen saver is set to come on.

Hope you get it figured out!

[This message has been edited by Darthmaum (edited September 09, 1999).]
 
My morning habit is World Net Daily with my coffee. They linked to an article in "Wired", which related to a recently-discovered new virus, "worm.explore.zip".

I don't recall the "how", but it can come in via the message of an email. You don't have to open an attachment.

I'm running Norton Anti-Virus; I quick-quick got an update from their website, as suggested in the article...

A do-it-yourself fix:

1. Remove the line "run=C:\Windows|system\explore.exe" from win.ini file.

2. Delete the file "C:\windows\system\explorer.exe"

FWIW, Art
 
Grayfox....

Computers do naturally start acting up.....your registries get crapped up and full of stuff that no longer exists. As well if you have a bunch of stuff in resident memory (screensavers, virus programs, etc) your system resourses are low from boot-up...then when you start multi-tasking you get slow performance, freezes and lockups. All these things act in harmony to bugger the thing up. Get your buddy to back up your proggies, e-mail boxes and stuff...then as SB said....F-disc and reformat...flush that bugger clean.....
When you set it up again, try to keep programs out of the "Start-up" menu...the "inconvenience" of manually starting a program outweighs the loss of performance it causes running in the background waiting to be used. You don't keep the lights on in a room you aren't in, why have a proggie running when not using it?

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
DC,

I have to disagree with you on this one.

Computers only act up if they are running a Windows product.... :)

Linux ran 497 days continuously without a hitch. They had to shut it down at that point because the had to move the computer.

My wife's machine, OTOH, was crashing 3-4 times a day running win98 with all the updates.

I'm moving her computer to Linux, learning on that one, then after the learning curve is over coverting my machine.

Here's a site for the Linux curious:
http://www.linuxos.org/Why-Linux.html

------------------
John/az

"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!

www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932



[This message has been edited by John/az2 (edited September 10, 1999).]
 
Fox, i'm like you on these things, i don't know s**t from shine-ola. my 'puter guru has had to help me kill mine and bring it back to life a couple times, the last time we installed win98. he recommends installing Norton System Works. I did, and have had a lot fewer problems, plus you can update your virus protection online, i guess as often as you wish. i usually do it once a week. it's really help this POS out. just a thought. good luck!

------------------
RKBA
www.southernparty.org
 
Aw, Gray, don't be so hard on yourself. Not knowing what FDISK is perfectly normal. Basically, it's a tiny DOS program designed to change the way your computer reads your hard drive. But if you don't know what you're doing, you can nuke your entire drive within keystrokes. It's like taking a gun apart beyond field stripping: Most people don't need it. That's why Microsoft hid the program away from the general public.

But anyway, among other suggestions, it might also be your cache filling up, but I'd have to know more details about your computer before being sure. It doesn't matter though, since you've got a friend who will do the diagnostics for you.

One thing is for sure though. Bloated, clunky OSes are annoying, especially with alternatives now available even as we speak. Linux is a highly proven performer, but is still not quite ready for prime time yet. I am personally wild about BeOS. Yeah yeah, grief me all you want, but it is as fast as it is reliable. :) Too bad it doesn't have much in the way of software support yet. Finally, there's always the venerable Macintosh. If all you want is to surf the net, the iMac is great for that. I'll probably get lots of flak for saying all that though. Hehe.

[This message has been edited by SB (edited September 10, 1999).]
 
I just read the LINUX reference and I'm still angry. Why is it that "computer
people" still do not understand the term "user".

To me, a computer is not a hobby, a toy, a device for meeting other "techies"
while we try to outsmart each other with binary-related palaver. I did not buy
a computer to gain admittance to the local PC Users Group, program in
FORTRAN, or learn C+++++++ (or whatever iteration they are on by now)!

To me, a computer is a tool! Period! When I buy a hammer all I want to do is
drive a nail. I feel no need to become a Mining Engineer, a specialist in
metallurgy, a forester, a specialist in woodworking, or a marketing hoodoo
specialist.

I want to drive a nail.

Some programmers just don’t understand how I can exist without a c\: in
my life. I answer, “Very well, thank you.”

They say I must learn about cars to drive a car. True, but their
argument quickly falls flat as an unrepaired spare tire.

I need have no knowledge or experience with hemispheric combustion
chambers, camshaft degrees of duration, or even the difference between
engine bore and stroke to drive a car!

Keep the car full of vital bodily fluids, change some as required, look for
signs of wear and tear, drive with care.

And another insult to users is the insane implication that a person should
not have a computer if he can’t or won’t learn MS-DOS (which, by the
way Bill Gates sold before he bought - an indicator of dubious integrity).

Do we require gun owners to know the difference in characteristics
between firing pins of different metals? Hogwash! If programmers were
half as honorable as they profess to be smart, they would build usable
computers that work and forsake vaporware and other examples of
smoke and mirrors.

A pox on most of them. Besides, many (no, not all!) support HCI like a
beloved relative. Phooey.

If it were NOT for the internet, I still would be better off with my Apple
//e with a second processor, expanded ram, and a printer that worked.
 
Gads....Dennis is such a cute ol' curmudgeon ain't he? :)

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
not to throw gas on the fire but

Think Different!

Get a Mac

a wonderful, powerful machine that is easy to use and is immune to 90 percent of the email delivered viri and trojans

i love my new beetle, my mac g3, and my ar 15

guess i am one of those radicals!

:)

dZ
 
Dennis i'm w/ you. if it weren't for the internet, i could do away w/ the thing altogether. yeah i used it for other things, but nothing that couldn't be done w/ pencil, paper, and maybe a calculator or fingers and toes. i never go into dos, other than when my guru made me, so we could fix and update things. K.I.S.S.,KEEP IT SIMPLE i'm STUPID!!!


------------------
RKBA
www.southernparty.org
 
et tu Dennis! :( and from a fellow Texan! Ya owe all us information technology folks a twelve pack of Shiner Bock.
Rule 23 of the "How to Handle your Computer Tech Support Guys" states:
"Feel free to say to us 'I don't know nothing about that computer crap'. We enjoy hearing our area of professional expertise disparaged and referred to as 'crap'".
Now, I know you didn't really mean anything like that- :) And DC, perhaps you or Dennis' wife might call him cute...I've never met him in person so I really can't say, and don't believe I would.
 
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