spam question

[VJ]

Hello,

I recently got this mail from a friend:

Dear Friend:
Hope the coming Christmas will bring you wholelife
lucky and happyness!
Welcome to visit this great website!
Our Web: < www.topshopping4774.com >
MSN: topshopping4774@hotmail.com
Email: topshopping4774@hotmail.com
We have many original produsts which have a low
price!
Our mainly products are:Ps3,xbox, phones, PSP,
display TV, notebook, video, Mp4, GPS, digital
cameras and so on.
To be our VIP member,we can send you an Nokia phone
for free!Any products you buy three,we will send you
one as a gift!
It will be great to buy original products in low
price along with Christmas gifts we will send to you!
Welcome to purchase! Please hurry! Thank you!
Best Regards

The mail was sent from his email address, included his signature and was sent to a number of people in his addressbook. I notified him of this, and suggested he'd scan his computer. He scanned it with Norton Antivirus and says it didn't find anything wrong.

Any suggestions on what could have caused this? And how we can prevent it?


Jörg

[NetSnake]

I always do an online scan (www.pandasecurity.com) on top of the antivirus I use (F-secure) when I suspect something is wrong.

Since I had a very bad experience with Norton 2003 (or 2004, can't remember) I never used Norton AV again.

[az]

What could have caused it? Malware on his computer. Exchange Norton for something that works properly.

[VJ]

Yeah... problem is that it is hard to convince him that Norton is not good...


Jörg

[Nowhere]

I think I've read something about how badly users protect themselves, even if they think they're ok...

edit: ahh, there it is http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/07/1722202

[VJ]

Well, I don't think it is entirely the users fault. They buy a program, and expect to be protected against everything. But there are many things that one should know about: virusses, malware, spam, firewalls, wifi networks, ...


Jörg

[KRSESQ]

Yeah, the simple fact is, no one antivirus program will detect EVERY virus out there. In order to have something approaching complete protection, one would need at least three antivirus programs running at the same time. This isn't practical, obviously. But your friend definitely needs a different program from Norton, if for no other reason than that Norton is such a God-awful performance hog. Tell him that.

Kevin

[Nowhere]

I'd say it is to large degree the fault of users...

Yes, they buy something and expect to be protected against anything (though here advertisers are mostly to blame; one could at most ask "why they don't question the advertising?" and obviously the answer is because they don't know anything, and that's not their fault, right?)

Slightly more irritating - they expect their 'tech-savvy' friends to fix everything in regular intervals (yes, also not their fault that they don't know enough, right?)

But...the thing is most of them don't want to learn anything, they expect two things above (which are caused mostly by this point) and that's it.

In this case...hm, make sure that the biggest possible number of people who got this know it's spam? I've found that was the only thing that worked with serial chain-letter senders...

[NetSnake]

@nowhere

sooooo true....

I even had to do this for the lab computers in Greece and not just for my lab. I practically did most of the repairs, updates, software installation etc for the whole floor!

In my current lab its the exact opposite situtation, all the computers are locked and we just have basic user rights.

I would prefer something in between

[Brian Ellis]

If your frend happens to be the recipient or sender of a joke/chain letter etc addressed to umpteen people in the TO space, any one of the others can send such spam to all the rest. I always bollock people who include me on TO lists, imploring them to use Bcc for all the addressees, so that this kind of thing can be avoided. If he opens the header, there is a fairish chance he will be able to see who actually sent it, if only from the originator's IP no.

[Nowhere]

Yep, I usually send answers (*) to chain letters back to sender (sender's email in "To:" field) and also to all other people that got it (but their email in "Bcc:"...not that it matters much at this point :/)

The bottom line: you have to make the person think that what he did/does makes him look like a fool/etc. among all of the recipients of the trash. The sender will care only about what large number of people might think of him, not what you think of him/tell him. I came to conclusion that nothing else works when it comes to changing such habits

(*) answer consists of: simple explanation how the magic of "I'm the only recipient of this mail" works and consequences of using "To:" adressing.
Bonus: it starts with the link to description of this particular chain letter (we have a local site listing them, usually googling for "site:domainofsite.pl few details about chain letter" gives the description on first try)
The method should be easily applicable to trash beeing sent by spambot.

[Umfriend]

I think it is time to face up to the facts: you're fiend's a spammer!