I have just this morning, in a different forum connected with my work,
seen a similar report from someone else -- who drew attention to a
common factor that they thought might be significant: They routinely
use IE to log into Yahoo. I strongly suspect that this may be true of
several of my friends who have had their Yahoo accounts hacked over the
last 2-3 years, and so I have to wonder if you do, too.
Microsoft publishes most of their updates on one Tuesday each month,
but in the last 10 weeks there have been at least two updates MS
considered too urgent to wait for that schedule, both to address
security flaws in various versions of IE. (It wasn't clear to me
whether these were different flaws, or multiple attempts to fix the same
stubborn flaw....)
Personally, I only ever use IE for three things:
1. To get to Windows Update on XP. (I have a couple of PCs running
Win7, where updates are handled outside IE.)
2. To download Firefox to a new Windows installation. (And from
Firefox, I usually add Chrome and Safari...)
3. To use a website that doesn't work properly with any other browser
-- the only one I visit these days is a chat site for stroke survivors
that others claim works with other browsers -- that's just not my
experience with it.
MalwareBytes is a great program, and I use it myself. And so is MSSE
-- I think it got off to a slow start, but has matured well. But NO
antivirus program can keep up with every nasty that's out there -- it
would be nice to say that running "Program X" will keep your system
safe, but the only thing I've tried that came close was Kaspersky --
because it wouldn't let my computer connect to ANYTHING....
> Someone has now spoofed my Yahoo email address and is apparently selling
> it.
> Is there any way to stop _that?_ Or am I going to have to change
> address after fifteen years?
Spoofing is a different kind of problem, and unfortunately not one
with an easy answer. Basically, the designers of early email protocols
assumed users could be trusted to try to set From: and Reply-To: fields
correctly, and so generally mail systems only look at where a message is
addressed to, and not where it claims to have come from. There have
been a couple of alternatives proposed to correct this, but I don't
think even the most popular has been implemented by more than 10% of the
email servers on the Internet.
(Bitter) experience suggests that the flood you're seeing will
probably slack off in a month or two, but only because somebody else has
become the spoofee of the month, and not because of anything you can do.
You might check with your ISP to confirm that any antispam measures
they offer are enabled for your account, which may help reduce the
number of messages that make it to your mailbox, but that's about it.
David Gillett
-------- Original Message --------
From: Joyce A <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, January 31, 2013 9:16 am
Thank you, David; if I may, I'd like to share my own experience with
that and I have a question in this thread as well.
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