You probably know already that you should never open attachments sent to you from unknown sources (I hope you know!) but how about attachments from someone you do know and learned to trust?

Are you aware how easily your computer can get infected with a virus? Hackers are getting more and more creative - sometimes I get stunned by their creativity. (If only those thieves could use this creativity to create something valuable!).

Here is an example of email with attachment I got yesterday: Would you open it if your were part of the Loska Team?

You would open a can worms and instead of cleaning your system, most likely you would infect your computer with a virus. Because this message was not sent by anyone at loska.com

If you are as prudent as you should be, don't ever trust the FROM address when you get something as questionable as an attachment. So, let's take a closer look at the header of this email. Not sure how to do it? It varies from program to program - for detailed instruction check this web site

Seeing a header information for the first time can be confusing. It lists the entire route the email message went through before reaching your computer. To identify the true originator of email, you need to pay attention to the last received from identifier. It is easy to spot here that the true originator of this email was someone identified as:

There is a good news regarding this identification. Although the spammer is able to forge not only the FROM address but even some parts if the header, he (or she) is not able to forged that last set of IP numbers (Internet Protocol) which identify his own computer almost as precisely as finger prints identify a specific individual. Neat. That allows you or specific authorities find the spam offender quite easily and bring to justice.

Of course bringing people to court is time consuming. Most of us can forward the offending email and file a complain to a specific server's abuse team. But rest assured that those abuse teams have tools that are sufficient to pull a plug on the spammer's email account.

I'm already quite accustomed to receiving hundreds of spam messages per day and have been sufficiently protected from computer viruses so far. But I must admit that it's more and more annoying. The amount of junk in my mail box has been increasing. And the type of spam messages has been more and more junky, more and more offensive. To keep my sanity I need to constantly improve my ways of dealing with spam.

My recent move is quite radical. Thanks to the MasterForm, a great cgi script created by Will Bontrager from willmaster.com I can totally remove any kind of active email address from my web sites and still keep the communication with visitors alive. This will prevent new spammers spiderware programs from extracting addresses of my autoresponders from my HTML code. If you are swamped by spam I highly recommend Master Form (as many other great scripts written by Will Bontrager who is a true master in his art).

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LOSKA.COM
Wanda Loskot - Success Connection
150 Heron's Run, Suite #124 - Sarasota, FL 34232 - USA
Phone (941) 342-4203 - Fax (240) 358-7445

Professional business coach, author & speaker specializing in Internet marketing.
Business seminars, corporate training and one-on-one coaching
for self-employed sales professionals and small business owners.

wanda@loska.com