Number 236 - January 2003

UPDATE
Hold For Online Help?     "Don't you just love being told that you are important to them? Especially after they have just shown you that they really could care less about you by keeping you waiting interminably--sometimes disconnecting unceremoniously!" -- Joe Mraz Seattle's KEGS AntiSPAM - Beat The 'Bots     Last month Microsoft introduced a new scheme in their Hotmail to defeat the practice by Spammers of using of robots to read e-mail addresses, passwords, etc. and then leaving unwanted messages (Spam) on your machine. Spammers use 'bots to do the grunt work of scanning tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of user machines. A relatively simply technique easily interpreted by humans but not by 'bots can be used to defeat this practice. See the article here. Get Rid of Spyware     Another bug-a-boo to plague us as we surf the 'net are those spyware "moles" which are surrespticiously implanted on our machines to pry into our surfing practices. See the articles about SpyBot here. It is possible that our librarian Tom Stepanek may have a copy available at the January meeting. Windows XP Complaints     Microsoft's new operating system continues to draw complaints as discussed in two articles in the Operating System notes & Tips. The search function does something unexpected by the author of one article while the other complains of security lapses. If you are using XP you probably should be aware of both situations. See the articles here and here.	Digital Cameras     With the advent of the difgital camera to displace the "quick shoot" genre or even 35mm cameras for most people, any article on the subject is usually welcome. In this issue we carry two installments of an on-going series on digital cameras by Richard P. Tendyke in dacs.doc the online newwsletter of the Danbury Computer Society. See Part 1 here. New Virus Threat Involves MP3 and XP     from Seatlle PI Crickler Puzzle 12/19/02     Viruses, not content to live in just program files, and now Flash files, have wormed their way into music files.     A bug in Microsoft's XP operating system allows hackers to fashion MP3 or WMA music files to give them control of listeners' computers.     The flaw was rooted out by security firm Foundstone Inc., who also reported a similar bug in music jukebox software Winamp.     Simply hovering over an infected music file's icon, even on a website, is enough to cause an infection. Microsoft has rated the flaw "critical" and has posted a patch.     Users of MP3 swapping services should be especially wary. Versions of Windows other than XP are immune but can still act as carriers.
Number 236 - January 2003