May 16 2009
A friend (who is currently considering starting a blog) told me about an interesting email service that he uses called Mailinator.
Actually, I used to achieve something like this using a catch-all. I thought it was very useful for giving individuals and companies spontaneous email addresses that I could later convert to a real email account. However, it does make you very vulnerable to spam :(
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Feb 17 2009
Today I got an email with no body and a winmail.dat attachment from somebody. The reason that the email was in this format is because the sender used Outlook. This really annoys me, because I use a variety of email clients, and none of them can use this format! Grrr… For more information about this file format see Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format.
Anyway, today I found a really nice web site for converting these files into the original files. It is very easy to use, and it produced my converted files instantly! The web site is Winmaildat.com Enjoy!
Jan 19 2009
Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. This is supposed to be due to a combination of credit card bills relating to Christmas shopping, pay-day still more than a week away, and bad weather :o
I am not sure how true this is, but the last few days were a bit depressing for me :o I think that one of my Windows 2000 computers might have become infected with a virus, and I cannot figure out how!
It all started when I noticed a file called a.exe that suddenly appeared in one of my folders. The creation time of this file was a few minutes before I noticed it. So my first reaction was to upload the file to VirusTotal. This is a really great web site that allows you to email or upload a file for free, and this file is then scanned by the most up-to-date versions of 39 different virus scanners. VirusTotal reported that 21 of the 39 virus scanners found a virus in my file :( You can read the full report.
VirusTotal most frequently identifies the worm as Pinit or Spamuzle. The best information I can find about these is from ThreatExpert and Symantec.
However, based on these descriptions my computer is not infected. This does not surprise me because only my administrator account has the privileges to make those changes. Furthermore, my hardware firewall would prevent the virus from communicating with the outside world. Blacknight also correctly identifies the file as a virus, and prevents it from passing through the email system.
So everything looks great, and it appears that I was not infected. However, the fact still remains that a.exe came from somewhere! This is really annoying me that I cannot find its source :|
The other aspect of this that is adding to my unease is the current rampage of the worm known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido. See Windows worm numbers ‘skyrocket’ for more details about this worm. Is this a coincidence, or is my problem somehow related to this?
I would really appreciate if anybody can provide me with any insight in relation to any of this!
Dec 06 2008
I have a few email accounts on which I do not perform any spam filtering. There is no real need to, because I usually receive about five messages in them per week, and about three of these messages are usually spam. So I have a quick glance at them, and then hit the delete key.
I got one such spam email this morning. This email was promoting yet another wonder drug for men who are worried about the size of their penises. However, there was something very different about this email – it had a Christmas theme! I will not quote it here, but the general message was that certain ladies will be very happy with what Santa will be capable of giving them this year :|
It was the first time that I ever saw a Christmas themed spam email!
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Nov 05 2008
I have stayed up very late to watch the US election, and it is now clear who the winner is! However, I do not want to get into politics in this blog!
From a technology point-of-view, I am amazed how much attention the mainstream media has given to the online election campaigns. In particular, I am sure that every viewer must now be aware of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Also, the winner thanked his supporters by email before making his first public appearance!
It will be very interesting to see some statistics from the main news web sites over the next few days regarding how busy their web servers were. I would expect some records!
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