Re: OT: Spam & Junk email - what to do?

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@ihug.co.nz>]

In <nJFab.22774$dk4.712280@typhoon.sonic.net> Andy McFadden  wrote:

> I woke up to find 675 of these waiting for me (74MB).  It's not spam
> or junk, it's the latest Microsoft e-mail virus.  Opening the "patch"
> infects the machine.
> 
> (Thankfully I run linux/qmail/procmail/spamassassin, and can redirect
> anything with a Microsoft executable to /dev/null.)
> 
> Make sure your machine is clean -- products from Symantec and MacAfee 
> can help here -- and then just weather the storm.

I woke up to find about 1500 had arrived in 10.5 hours. That's over two 
per minute! The good news is that my ISP has a virus filter which 
removed the attachment on almost all of them, and I'm running Mac OS X 
so the ones that do make it can't do any damage anyway. The bad news is 
that my ISP still insists on sending the stripped email to me, so it 
still took a long time on a 56k modem to clear them all. Running 
something like POPmonitor doesn't really help since it takes just as 
long to download the headers, check them for real email, and delete 
everything else, as it does just to download the whole lot.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

PS/2 Mouse Adapter for vintage Apple II or Mac
order at http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz