Replies

> Help! My junkmail folder is getting filled with “Message Not Deliverable” type of
> SMTP status messages from servers. My email address is in the “reply-to” of
> these message headers, although never in the “from” field. I’ve blocked port 25
> on my local machine and they’re still coming even after 3 hours. Is there
> anything I can do?

A lot of the advice I’ve seen assumes that your machine is sending the spam messages, or that the spammers have got the email address from your machine. In fact, they may have gotten it from any of your friends or business contacts who have your address in their address books, and as someone else pointed out, the spams probably are coming from a zombie machine in China or somewhere, so there’s little or nothing you can do (or could have done) to prevent it. I’ve been getting messages for years from a bunch of colleagues at my work, offering me Viagra, Russian brides, and other adventures. You can get an idea where they are coming from by looking carefully at the headers (should be a button on your mail program to see full headers) and paying attention to the chain of relays — the last IP address 80.112.23.1 or whatever is the source, unless the sender disguised that as well. I’m glad your volume has settled down — not everyone is so lucky.

SMTP mail was designed for use by honest people — we are ready for a better alternative I think.

Regards,
Allen

Paul,

> By mode, do you mean one of the following?

Yes, precisely. I got to that by right-clicking the desktop, just as I do in XP (the menu was different). I didn’t try the Control Panel, but will do that when I get home.

I have not changed the display resolution. I think it is set to 1600×900, which is the maximum available, and what I want it set to.

I don’t have to edit the picture on XP to get it to display correctly, though I may do that for selected photos.

Thanks in advance,

Allen