Dave "Bytes"

Please remember to use your thinker, before you tinker!

July 21, 2005

A Periodic Newsletter for the Members of the Sarasota PC User Group and the World!!

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Here's An Outlook Express Tip

Adding Stationery in Outlook Express

You can dress up your Outlook Express 6 communication by adding the look of stationery. A touch of color and some graphics can do wonders for
visually boring e-mail. To use the Outlook Express stationery feature, just follow these steps:

In the Outlook Express main window, click the arrow on the Create button.

Select a stationery option listed in the menu that appears, or choose the Select Stationery command to get more choices.

In the Select Stationery dialog box that appears, select a stationery from the list.

Click OK to apply the stationery to the new message.

With a new, reply, or forwarded message open, you can apply stationery by using either of these methods:

Choose Format--Apply Stationery, and then click a stationery to apply.
Choose More Stationery to access the Select Stationery dialog box.
If you have applied stationery and decide that you don't want to use it anymore, just click the arrow on the Create button and select No Stationery
from the drop-down menu.

BITS

BYTES

Every
Thursday
at
6:00 pm

WLSS Radio
am930

July 21st

Computer Learning with the
Sarasota PC Users Group
Dr. Bob Thommes - Director of Education

Clicking on Dave will take you to the

"Bits & Bytes"

site where you can listen to the most recent broadcast

Listen "LIVE" on the Internet!

Here's A Windows Tip

Getting Rid of Preinstalled Software

One of the things (among many) that drives a lot of computer users crazy is preloaded software. You buy a computer from Dell, Gateway, or any number
of other retailers, and they throw in a boatload of software, already installed on the computer. The problem is that most of the software is of very
little value. Sometimes all of the software is of no value. It's easy to fill up a computer with no-value software and tout what a great deal you're
getting. Hogwash!

Did your computer come with lots of software preinstalled? If so, take a few minutes to figure out how much of it you actually use. Take a look at
what was installed when you got your system and add the unused software to your list of removal targets. Don't worry; removing preinstalled software
won't make your computer stop working, void your warranty, or subject you to criminal prosecution. (Unlike that stupid little tag on mattresses that
you might still be scared to remove.)

The "Bytes" Beg, Bargain & Barter Basement

Got something "computer related" to sell? Looking for that rare peripheral? If it's computer related you can submit a short classified ad for exposure in Dave "Bytes". Be sure to include your name and e-mail address in the ad. You can also include a picture of the item. Now some would suggest that there be a charge for this feature but alas, since my bookkeeping skills leave much to be desired I've determined that this will be a free service to all SPCUG members in good standing. "Bytes" is currently sent to almost 1500 homes in the area. Ad requests will be included as soon as possible. I assume absolutely no responsibility as to the accuracy or completeness of supplied info. All transactions are between consulting adults which leaves me entirely off the hook. Please let me know by clicking HERE when your merchandise is sold so that I can remove it from the listing. I will try to run each ad for a month.

Click Here To Submit Your Ad

Sorry ... Just Couldn't Resist

A minister in Florida lamented that it was difficult to get his message across to his congregation: "It's so beautiful here in the winter," he said, "that heaven doesn't interest them."

"And it's so hot here in the summer that hell doesn't scare them."

Figuring Out How Spammers Get E-Mail Addresses

Spammers employ a variety of methods to acquire e-mail addresses. Some methods take advantage of the e-mail addresses readily available on the
Internet, whereas others employ different levels of trickery, from harvesting to outright stealing.

Harvesting from the Internet
Spammers (and their assistants) utilize a technique called harvesting to acquire e-mail addresses. While harvesting requires a lot of bandwidth, it
is ingeniously simple: Simply download the right pages from select Web sites and extract the e-mail addresses that are there for the picking. Some
of the tools and sources employed in harvesting e-mail addresses from the Web include the following:

Web spiders: Spammers employ Web crawlers and spiders that harvest e-mail addresses from Web sites. It's common for Web sites to include mailto: URLs
as well as unlinked user@domain addresses. Put your e-mail address on a Web site, and you're spam bait.
These spiders are not unlike the spiders and Web crawlers used by Yahoo, Google, and others that scan the Internet's Web sites in order to keep Web
search indexes fresh. Except that e-mail address harvesting spiders are up to no good. And where do these spiders get domain names? With over 90
million .com domains in existence, it's easy enough to just guess domain names in order to come up with quite a few.

Newsgroups: It's a straightforward task to harvest e-mail addresses from Usenet newsgroups: Just pull in a big news feed and extract the e-mail
addresses with a simple shell or Perl script. Newsgroup volumes are still increasing exponentially — at a rate of at least several gigabytes per day.
This means lots of e-mail addresses are there for the taking. Any spammer with enough bandwidth can slurp up all those bits and just sift out the e-
mail addresses.

Groups, blogs, and discussion boards: Yahoo! and Google have their groups and mailing lists, many of which make their members' e-mail addresses
available. There are thousands of blogs and discussion boards out there, too, that contain easily acquired e-mail addresses.

Test messages: In this method, spammers send test e-mails to recipients whose addresses they simply guess — so-called test e-mail messages sent to
addresses like service@, info@, test@, marketing@, security@.
Spammers at one time could reliably conclude that, if they receive no "bounce-o-gram" back from the domain, that the e-mail address must be legit.
This is because e-mail servers used to routinely send nondelivery receipts (NDRs) back to the sender of a message sent to a nonexistent address. But
that ain't necessarily so any more: More servers are opting to stop sending NDRs.

Unsubscribe links: Many spam messages include an opt-out or unsubscribe link so that the recipient can request not to receive more spam. However,
often the real purpose of unsubscribe links is to confirm a valid, active e-mail address.

Malware: Spammers sometimes use Trojan horses, viruses, and worms to extract e-mail addresses from individual users' computers. If mass-mailing worms
can extract the contents of a user's e-mail address book for the purpose of propagating spam, then it's going to be easy to perform the same
extraction and simply send the list back to the hacker's lair. This would probably be easier, in fact, because this activity is far less likely to
be detected than a mass-mailing worm.

Unsubscribe requests: A good number of spam messages contain "unsubscribe me" links that a user clicks to opt out. However, many spam operators
actually continue to send spam to e-mail addresses submitted to "unsubscribe me" links. When a user submits such a request, the spammer knows that
the address being sent is a valid e-mail address. Do you think they'll actually stop sending spam to a known valid address? Not on your life!

Buying and stealing addresses
Among spammers and e-mail address brokers, e-mail addresses are a traded and sold commodity. If you know where to look, you can purchase CDs and
downloads containing e-mail addresses by the hundreds of thousands or millions.

And of course, everyone has heard the stories of Web sites that collect your e-mail address and promise not to sell it (ha!). But they sell, trade,
or give away e-mail addresses anyway, even when their privacy policy says they won't. A few high-profile companies have been prosecuted and/or fined
for this practice.

Business and service provider e-mail lists are also stolen and sold to spammers. In mid-2004, a former AOL employee was charged with stealing 90
million screen names and 30 million e-mail addresses from AOL and selling them to a spammer for $100,000. This is not an isolated case, but it is a
noteworthy one because of the size of the heist. So much for privacy, eh?

And Now Here's

Dave's Cool Download

Skype

Getting in touch with friends and family is easy with this Internet telephone software, but the functionality is conditional. Skype offers a graphically pleasing interface that's much like a chat program. To make calls, you'll need to create a contact list of friends and family or use the phone-like interface to dial people directly. You also can access a pull-down menu for painless conference calls of up to four people. To make free calls, both parties will need to have the Skype software installed. To call regular phones, you'll need to sign up for a plan with SkypeOut, the developer's paid service that offers cheap by-the-minute calling. We like the intuitive chat-like interface of Skype and we were surprised at the excellent sound quality, even with regular desktop speakers. Similar to a chat client, you can set your availability status, but we also would like to see a missed call indicator or, better yet, some form of voice mail. Overall, we think Skype is a strong contender in the Internet Telephony category, and anyone who's interested in talking for free should give it a try. For international callers who have computers, this program is a no-brainer solution for long-distance bills.

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(be sure to choose the Sarasota PC Users Group where asked)

SPCUG Volunteer Of The Month

Lloyd Lininger

Our Volunteer of the month, during his working years served on the faculty and administration of research universities for 43 years, teaching mathematics, statistics, biostatistics, and public health. In addition to SPCUG he plays golf and has a big interest in genealogy. He joined SPCUG in 2004 and is currently a member of the PC Refurbishing Project. He joined the PC Refurbishing group early this year and with his knowledge of computers was refurbishing computers with very little training. Over the past several months he has been a major contributor to our refurbishing efforts with a very special interest in refurbishing and installing computers for the Suncoast Center for Independent Living. Please extend our congratulations to the Volunteer of the month, Lloyd Lininger.

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While Wandering The Web

Error messages

Error messages call attention to problems on your computer, but they rarely provide anything resembling a solution. Some don't even indicate which program has run into trouble. This page lists the exact wording of over 300 common error messages, along with links to help correct the errors

Click Here To Visit