Spam | Castellini on Computers - Computer help for beginners

Posts Tagged: spam

Participating and/or Moderating Email Discussion Groups

Last month, John, a GJ User Group regular, suggested I lead a discussion about email discussion groups, sometimes known as mailing lists. I thought it was such a good idea, that I made it this month’s User Group topic. Email discussion groups allow emailers with a particular passion for a hobby, political leaning, medical infliction, educational purpose or any other common thread to share ideas, debate, and dialogue via email. Many discussion groups have left email and exist entirely online as discussion forums which allow for even more instant feedback and easier ways to share links, photos, videos and more.

To find discussion groups you can join, try these four techniques:

The association or organization’s web site that heads up the cause, hobby, etc.
Search for your interest followed by email discussion group (ex: African violets in dry climates email discussion group)
Go to and search Yahoo! Groups
Go to and search Topica

Unfortunately, discussion groups can be a hunting ground for email spammers to gather up email addresses. I recommend using a different email address than your every day address for these groups. When you sign up, you will generally have the option of receiving updates every time someone writes to the group, a daily digest of all posts for the day or a weekly digest of all the new posts for that week. For busy discussions, the daily digest is best. If you are fanatical about your group, go for the immediate notifications. You also have the option of changing how you receive messages at any time.

If you want to create your own email discussion group or list, use either the Yahoo! Groups or Topica services. Yahoo and Topica have matured over the years and merged with other smaller services morphing into easy to manage, powerful systems.

Bresnan Email Woes

Although this tip targets one particular Internet provider, ANY computer user will benefit from the advice I give at the end of the article. In Western Colorado, a company called Bresnan provides a large swath of the cable services…including cable Internet. Overall, I have no problems with the Bresnan service. They run an extremely speedy and pretty stable Internet connection.

However, my beef with the service has always been their sub-standard email service.

Only 50 megabytes of space per email address (most services offer 1000 megabytes and up)
Horrific spam filtering…filters legit email, and lets a lot of spam through
Web mail application is among the worst I’ve seen

Over the past few weeks, Bresnan customers have been pleasantly surprised to see that all of the sudden 99% or more of their spam messages have stopped arriving in either their screened mail folder or their inbox. They were happy. What they and I didn’t start to figure out until this week was that Bresnan’s new anti-spam system was so stringent that many legitimate individual and business emailers no longer can send to a Bresnan address. They swung the pendulum too far the other way.

Unfortunately, there is no solution that I can see for the moment except to strongly consider the advice I have dished out for years: DO NOT USE YOUR INTERNET PROVIDERS EMAIL SYSTEM! I hope I said that plainly enough. When you sign up for Internet service from any entity, a complimentary email address automatically comes with it. You are NOT obliged to use that email at all.

For a much better email experience and have the ability to check your email from any computer any time AND get an email address you will never have to change no matter who buys out who and how many times you move or switch Internet providers, change your email to one of the online systems like Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail. Gmail is my current email system of choice. OR, consider creating your own personal email address by registering your own domain and use it for your email. Either of these options will allow you to avoid the frustration that Bresnan customers here in Colorado and elsewhere are experiencing.

Email Tips / Internet Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 2 Comments
14
May 08

Use Disposable Email Addresss to thwart spam

In our monthly computer user group today, the discussion some how made its way to disposable email addresses. Many web sites offer free, disposable email addresses you can create for one time use to sign up for a temporary web services, or make an inquiry to a web site that you don’t want to have your real email address. Beyond anonymity, using a disposable email address will reduce the amount of spam that comes into your real email inbox.

My first line of defense in fighting spam is maintaining more than one email address. I have email addresses for family and friends, one for shopping, one for newsletters, and one strictly for junk. I recommend opening multiple accounts via any of the online web mail systems like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Hot Mail (now known as Windows Live Hotmail). These accounts are free and easy to manage.

If you prefer not to have mulitple email addresses, try one of these services to create temporary, disposable addresses instead:

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 6 Comments
30
Apr 08

Gmail update

I started using Gmail exclusively as my email program of choice almost eight weeks ago and haven’t opened Microsoft Outlook since. I wrote about it three weeks into the process, and decided to give another update today.

As I mentioned in my first installment, I do have a Gmail address, but don’t use it hardly at all. Instead, I utilize a wonderful feature built into Gmail that allows folks with their own domain email (email through a web site you own like helpmerick.com, myflowershop.com, etc) to retrieve that email directly into Gmail. This allows me to benefit from Gmail’s great features while maintaining my own email addresses. I haven’t missed a beat not having Outlook (which I used for almost 10 years) because I have more mobility, searching power, and flexibility with Gmail than I ever did with Outlook. And I mention Outlook because that’s what I used, but no other email application can match the features and simplicity of Gmail. Yahoo Mail might run a good race, but it is mired in the traditional email paradigm.

Gmail broke out of that system of folders and single email addresses and introduced a catch-all system for all your email with powerful searching abilities, easy to use filtering, incredibly accurate spam filtering, and the introduction of labels (replaces folders), and threaded messages. Read my previous article that talks about some of these features to learn more. I wrote today’s short blurb about Gmail because many people have been curious if I stayed with it. The answer is a resounding yes, and I plan to continue using Gmail until an even better, simpler, faster, and more innovative solution presents itself.

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 9 Comments
23
Apr 08

Leave your comments!! Please!

We love getting your feedback on our articles and tips. Unfortunately, too few of you participate. Our most commented articles are our Cameroon Pet Scams and desktop wallpaper articles. I did get a few comments on my annual plea for tax reform, but I’m always surprised at how few comments we get compared to the number of visitors to our site.

We do have the ReCaptcha system to thwart automated robot spammers on our site, but the words are generally easy to decipher (plus they help the Library of Congress digitize their library). If you have a tough time reading the cipher, you can hit the refresh button to get two new words (see picture). You can hit the refresh button as many times as you want. Also, keep in mind that the cipher’s are not case sensitive. I would recommend clicking the little speaker which gives you an auditory cipher to decode, but they generally are much harder than figuring out the two words.

There you have it…I’m on my knees groveling for comments. We love reading the comments and encourage you to leave them often…and invite all your tech friends and family to visit the site and do the same! Thanks.

Riding Shotgun with Adam — No Comments
21
Apr 08

Think twice before your blame your computer’s manufacturer for problems

“What brand of computer do you recommend?” is one of the most common questions I get asked. My answer is usually, “It really doesn’t matter as long as it is a name brand and has the specs that you need.”

I often hear comments like, “Our first computer was a Dell and we constantly had problems with viruses and spam,” or “I’m never going to get another HP, this one just locks up and crashes all the time.”

Most computer problems I see every day have nothing to do with the parts they are made up of. Most home computer problems are software related – not hardware.

Viruses, spyware, bulky updates, too many programs running in the background, or a combination of any of the above slow a machine down and cause all forms of undesired effects. No matter what company made the system, the only feature that can be blamed is the software.

The fact that one computer performs better than another could be due to many factors and none of them have anything to do with the brand on the outside. Firguring out why one machine works better can come down to basic scientific testing.

Before blaming the manufacturer for the problems (or worse, the store you bought it from) analyze the entire situation.

Have any of the people using the computer changed? Adding a single teenager to the mix or having an employee who surfs for porn in his spare time can be catastrophic to a system.

Is all of the sofware the same on each computer? Comparing a Windows 98 computer to a Windows Vista computer is not a true comparison. Compairing how well your old computer ran with Netscape 4.7 verses the new computer running IE 7 has nothing to do with the manufacturer of the computer.

Do you use the computer the same? Maybe that old reliable computer was only used for bookkeeping and documents, the new one may be used for music and digital photos. Multimedia is tough on processing power and memory.

There are lemon models of computers, but once you open the hood on most computer brands you will find many similarities. They all use standard Intel or AMD processors. Most use AOpen, Asus or other brand name motherboards. The video chips are made by ATI, Intel or NVidia or another name brand. The drives are made by Seagate or a few other name brands, the optical drives are made by one of five OEMs.

Typically. she only real differences are how the BIOS is programmed, the outside shell and the name on the outside. In fact, many computer companies today produce computers for several other manufacturers. HP and Compaq are the same, Gateway and EMachine are the same and even Dells are sometimes built by companies that OEM for other manufacturers.

I have never made any secret of the fact that brand loyalists get on my nerves. It is a mistake to base everything you know about a company’s products (bad or good) on a single product. You must let the company prove that it’s products are terrible as a rule – Norton security software is an excellent example of this.

There are also bad companies that see the light and change their ways – or at least become less bad, AOL is an example in that scenario.

Technology changes and evolves faster than anything the earth as ever known, forming any opinion about a company or product and refusing to change it will always come back to bite you in the end.

We would not be suprised to see Norton clean up their act and become a recommended product one day. On the other hand, as much as we love AVG, we may one day tell everyone to steer clear of it. Being willing to always keep an open mind to new products and technology is what makes technological progress possible

Email Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 2 Comments
31
Mar 08

Gmail convertee

Three weeks ago, I switched from using Microsoft Outlook (which I had used since 1998) to Gmail.

What is Gmail?

Gmail is the fast, free web based email from search giant Google. Gmail offers free POP3 access (if you want to download your email into Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc), 6.5 GB of storage (and the number continually grows), and the best web based spam filter I’ve seen so far.

Why did I switch?

I used Outlook because I could manage my contacts, calendar, email, to-do list, and memos in one program and then synchronize to my Palm Treo. After I purchaed and started to use Vista last year (solely to learn it and to be able to support it), my Treo and Outlook stopped talking to each other. Strike One. This was Outlook 2007 and some of the features I enjoyed (like being able to print just selected text and using just the basic Outlook email editor instead of the slower Word Editor) were dropped and features I knew how to work with in all prior versions were moved, renamed, and/or changed. Strike Two.

I started using Gmail as an experiment on both my desktop and my Palm Treo since Gmail lets you retrieve any other POP3 (standard email) accounts directly into Gmail. After a couple of weeks, I got the hang of Gmail’s Label system which replaces the traditional folder organization in Outlook and all other email systems. I found that I liked the ability to have ALL of my email available to me from ANY computer. My biggest hurdle in leaving Outlook behind was my Cloudmark Desktop anti-spam system. Cloudmark kept my eamil sanity by quietly and efficiently shielding my delicate eyes from the massive amounts of spam I receive every day. Well, after my two week Gmail trial and now my full three week marriage to Gmail, I can say that the Gmail spam filter is every bit as effective as Cloudmark’s. Strike Three!

What do I like about Gmail?

The always available email from any computer or Internet device (like my Treo) without concern for space.
Great spam filter.
Fast and simple interface.
Labels…after working with Gmail Labels, they make much more since than folders.
Fast searching of email.
Wonderful Rules system that makes creating email rules a snap.
Ability to retrieve external email addresses.

My transition to Gmail has been painless and liberating. If you are thinking of changing email addresses or adding a new one, definitely give Gmail serious consideration. Look for future how-to videos about using Gmail here at HelpMeRick.com.

General Computer Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 3 Comments
21
Mar 08

AVG Antivirus 8.0 Upgrade Advice

The past few days calls and emails started filtering in about the new AVG 8.0 version folks have seen appear on their free versions of AVG Antivirus. The common query is, “Should I upgrade?”

No, home users of AVG Antvirus do not need to upgrade at all. The current free version of AVG will continue to be updated and as it has been for years. The new 8.0 version is the newest commercial product from AVG Technologies (they changed their name from Grisoft last week).

As much as we like AVG Antivirus and their anti-spyware product, we don’t like their full Internet Security package. Like all the other all-inclusive security packages from Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, etc, the AVG Internet Security product packs in too much software that will decrease the performance of your system. If you like the Swiss Army approach, it is probably the best of these types of packages, but we prefer you select your security packages a la carte.

To review our security recommendations for Windows home users, we recommend:

AVG Antivirus Free Edition
Mozilla Firefox (or Opera) web browser (don’t use Internet Explorer)
Keep the Windows Firewall enabled
Use a router with high speed Internet connections
If you use Outlook, Thunderbird, or Outlook Express, there is nothing better than Cloudmark Desktop to fight email spam
IF you have teenagers (or immature adults) who use your system regularly, add SpyBot Search & Destroy and the AVG AntiSpyware product to the mix and update and scan at least weekly.

Links to all these products can be found on our Links & Resources page.