OT: Trojans

[AMF]

Eudora.

free at www.eudora.com

Much easier than webmail...

Atrocities said:
So what are your recommendations? Just stop using OL and use web mail instead? I guess I can do that.

How does OL allow these things to get installed? Nortan detects most, but I guess not all.

[Suicide Junkie]

http://www.c4vct.com/kym/humor/outlook.htm

[Will]

dogscoff said:
And here's me expecting a thread about condoms.

Stop using IE, Outlook and/ or outlook express. THat's gonna tie up a lot of security loopholes right there.

Hey, I thought it was my school's mascot...

But, to reiterate what everyone else has said, ditch the Microsoft "internet suite", they're all riddled with exploits that any 11-year-old kid could use. Run windowsupdate to patch your system, get virus definitions on a regular schedule, scan on a regular schedule. There's a bunch of security settings that you can change to make things better, but are for some dumb reason turned off by default (I can't think of any now off the top of my head, but any windows tweak sites, eg. annoyances.org, will have a bunch of them).

[Sivran]

I suggest anything BUT Outlook/Outlook Express.

Some good alternatives:
Mozilla (with mailnews) http://www.mozilla.org/
Thunderbird (like Mailnews, only stand-alone) http://www.mozilla.org/
Pegasus (awesome for when you have tons of email accounts) http://www.pmail.com/

If you absolutely MUST continue using O/OE, visit the DSLR Security forum at http://www.dslreports.com/forum/security,1
There, they have an FAQ on email security and privacy: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/9173 If that doesn't help, make a post on the security forum asking for advice.

A dedicated anti-trojan application is also an option. A/T apps are, as you can guess, MUCH better at picking up and killing evil trojans than any A/V, even Kaspersky. You can learn about some A/Ts at the security forum above.

[Gandalf Parker]

Atrocities said:
So what are your recommendations? Just stop using OL and use web mail instead? I guess I can do that.

How does OL allow these things to get installed? Nortan detects most, but I guess not all.

This comes up in the alt.hacker newsgroup alot.

Its not that Windows/outlook/internetExplorer are evil or badly written. Its just that Windows is popular, and has a habit of adding "neat and user friendly" things to their software which will automatically without-asking do things for you. They are all good ideas but since it is so popular it becomes a prime target which means someone eventually finds a way to abuse it. And they dont always make it easy to turn that junk off.

You will be happier if you find a mail program which does mail. And a news program that does news. And a browser that doesnt try to do everything. And have NONE of them be microsoft or loaded with "user friendly no questions asked" defaults. I read my mail in text mode on linux, if I do need a gui email program on windows I use thunderbird and I use mozilla firefox to browse. I almost never have any alerts for trojans, viruses, adware, spyware, etc etc.

Of course I might be shooting myself in the foot. My confort might not necessarily be because they are better written. It MIGHT be because they are less used. If they get way more popular I might have to move on (back to windows programs? )

[Sivran]

Its not that Windows/outlook/internetExplorer are evil or badly written. Its just that Windows is popular,

Not entirely true. ActiveX is a huge security hole, and IE's integration into Windows itself turns nearly every single IE vulnerability into a Windows vulnerability. That's a fact. Alternative browsers are more secure by default because they don't support ActiveX.

There's a good reason Windows is the only OS in which things such as a web browser are so deeply integrated.

[Fyron]

There's a good reason Windows is the only OS in which things such as a web browser are so deeply integrated.

That reason being monopoly...

[Atrocities]

MS = bad mojo. But unless you are a computer wiz, or can aford an apple, your screwed. Linux is a nightmare to get working, and one that I do NOT care to embark upon. I am poor so an apple is out of the question.

[Fyron]

An Apple is just BSD with Mac crap piled on top... no real reason to go Apple/Macintosh these days...

There are builds of Linux that are designed for the corporate world, so they are fairly easy to get installed. Suse, Mandrake, Debian, etc.

[Sivran]

BECOME a geek. Find yourself a community of linux Users willing to answer your questions. Install their preferred distro. Ask away. The n00b-friendly (ones that have graphical installs) distros of linux are quite easy to get up and running to the point where you have network access, and from there you can fire up a browser and point it to your forum and ask away.

Supposedly, the Gentoo community is known for being very helpful. Also, Gentoo is a LiveCD installation. Thus, during the installation process (which is long and involved) you can be using links (or lynx) to view the installation guide. You can even start up an SSH server, and let someone in to configure it for you, though that would defeate the purpose: you learn quite a bit, doing a Gentoo install, as compared to zip, when doing a Red Hat/Suse install.

If you have multiple computers, and a network, it becomes even easier. Trouble? Use your other comp to find a solution.