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© 2003, 2004, 2005 Trinidadusa.net
WWW.TRINIDADUSA.NET:
Serving Trinidad, Walsenburg, Aguilar, Cokedale, Branson, Kim, Segundo, Weston, Stonewall, Cucahara, LaVeta, Gardner and most places in between!
Tips and Advice
10 Ways to Avoid Internet Viruses
Here is good advice from www.net-security.org on safe surfing.Finding Stuff on the Internet
Our favorite Internet search tools are Open Directory and Google, but there are lots of others. Be aware that not all search engines are created equal. Some (like Google) attempt to index the entire Internet, others only show you sites that have paid for the privilege. Check out our search page for easy access to a whole bunch of them.News Servers
We do not operate our own Usenet server, but there are so many public ones on the Internet that you should be able to find news on any subject you want. Here are some links to get you started:Privacy
- NewzBot! Public USENET Resources for the Masses. Excellent searchable list of public news servers. Start with this.
- Free Public News Servers List
- NewsSearch. Search engine to find a particular newsgroup on a free server.
- We respect your privacy, and will not give or sell your email address or account information to anyone. We will not monitor your usage or read your email.
- Please protect your password and keep it confidential. Remember, anyone who has your password can read your email, send email in your name, and alter your Web site.
- For reasons of personal privacy, we do not make backups of customer mailboxes. This means that you need not worry that there may be copies of your old email hanging around on our servers. It also means that you store mail on the server at your own risk. If you want to backup some or all of your email, you need to do so by downloading it to your local machine.
- To learn more about how to protect your privacy on the Internet, check out www.privacy.net.
"I keep getting email form 'postmaster@trinidadusa.net'. Who is that?"
This postmaster does not work for the U. S. Postal Service and is not a person but a machine---our mail server to be specific.When you get a message from postmaster@trinididusa.net, it usually means that a message you sent couldn't be delivered. The message will tell you the recipient and subject of the failed message, and try to give you some idea of why it couldn't be delivered. The most common reasons are:
- "User unknown". This usually means that you mis-typed some part of your recipient's email address or that your recipient has switched ISP's.
- "Mailbox full", which means that your recipient hasn't checked his or her mail for awhile.
Some mail servers return errors as a three-digit code, the first digit usually being "4" or "5".
- A "5xx" code means a "permanent" error. There is no point in trying to resend the message. "User unknown" is a permanent error.
- "4xx" errors are "temporary". You may want to try re-sending the message later. "Mailbox full" is a temporary error--your recipient may check his mail, thus making room for your message.
Security
New Internet viruses and malicious hacks are constantly emerging. We strongly recommend that you keep your operating system and Internet software up-to-date and apply security patches as soon as they are released. This is especially important if you use any variety of Microsoft Windows and/or any version of Microsoft Outlook.Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are Enemies of the InternetHere are some major non-commercial security sites which have a wealth of up-to-date information:
- CERIAS Information Security Hotlist
- Hideaway.net
- Internet Security Information & Tools
- Help Net Security
- CERT Coordination Center
Also, you might want to read the system administrator's rant about Outlook Express.
You can check up on the lastest security-related news, virus alerts and patch announcements here.
Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are present on every Windows machine and are consequently the most widely-used Internet tools in existence. They are buggy, virus-ridden, manipulative programs, cynically created by mediocre programmers whose goals have more to do with marketing than functionality.Spam95% of Internet viruses could not spread without the gaping holes in these two programs, both of which have security records similar to that of a sieve. The sooner you quit using them altogether, the sooner your computer will become safe from Internet bad guys, and the sooner your Internet experience will become what you want it to be rather than what the smiling suits and talking paperclips at Microsoft think you deserve.
We suggest you use Mozilla instead. Mozilla is relatively safe, easier to use, more featureful and more fun. It is also free.
Mozilla is a free Internet application suite that includes
It is stable, speedy, standards-compliant, and full of useful features.
- a Web browser
- an email client
- an HTML composer
- an IRC chat client
- and some other stuff.
Unlike Internet Explorer, Mozilla blocks pop-up ads with a configurable built-in tool, and manages cookies and passwords site-by-site. Its mail reader offers powerful and intelligent spam filtering. You can surf multiple sites in a single tabbed browser window.
Other Mozilla features include:
- Plug-in support (Flash, Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Acrobat Reader, RealOne and RealPlayer)
- Sidebar
- Junkmail controls
- Image and plug-in blocking in mail (or view as plain text)
- Mail message views
- Safe from email viruses
- WYSIWYG page editing
- One button publishing
- Bookmark custom keywords
- Extensible search
- Themes
- Find-as-you-type page search
- Fine-grained Javascript controls
- Extensibility
- Multiple mail accounts
Mozilla is available for Linux, MacOSX, OS/2, all species of Windows and a bunch of other operating systems. You can download the latest version (for FREE) from www.mozilla.org
If you want to save the hassle of a big download, you can get a CD with the current Mozilla installer direct from www.mozilla.org for just $3.95 plus shipping, get a 5 pack of Mozilla CD's for $14.95 plus shipping (consider these for stocking stuffers) or purchase an annual subscription for $16.95 (includes shipping) and get a CD of every new Mozilla version as soon as it is released.
"Spam" is unsolicited email--the digital equivalent of junk mail. It can become a major problem. It is contemptible, and in some states (not Colorado, unfortunately) illegal.Stuff Not to DoSpammers are moving targets. They use annonymous servers, fake IP addresses, fake domain names, and if possible relay the spam through another (innocent but misconfigured) server to hide its point of origin. They change phone numbers and email addresses frequently. All this makes them nearly impossible to catch.
Spammers use a variety of techniques to get email addresses, including:
- Social engineering. Attempting to get you to reveal your email address. Beware of Websites that require your email address as part of the registration process.
- Spammers buy and exchange lists of email addresses with other spammers to build their databases. If one spammer has your address, soon many more will.
- Spammers use "bots", which are web crawlers similar to those used by ligitamate search engines. These bots prowl webservers hunting for pages that contain email addresses.
- Unusual but reportedly becoming more common are email viruses (distributed via Outlook Express) which, when they infect your computer, send the spammer the addresses in you Outlook Express addressbook.
The best ways to avoid spam are
- Be careful about giving your email address to any web site that asks for it. If a website demands your email address in order to view a page or download something and you see no good reason to give it, just make something up.
(HINT: If you just type random characters (or type nothing), many web forms will return a page saying something like "Please supply your real email address". What these forms actually do is to check the string you type for "@" and ".", characters which are present in all real email addresses. Phonies like "not.your@bussiness.com" will almost always work. Sometimes, if the form is sophisticated enough to check, you need to supply a real domain name to get where you want to be. In this case I suggest something like "im.not.really@hotmail.com".)
- Never respond to spam, even to tell the spammer what you think of him. All you accomplish is to confirm your email adddress, making it more valuable when the spammer sells it.
- The "opt out" links at the bottom of many spam emails seldom work. They are just there to make the spammer look legal. Using such a link will usually result in more, not less, spam.
- Don't particpate in email chain letters.
- Be careful about subscribing to email discussion lists that publish the email addresses of subscribers on the Web.
- If you have a web page, hide email addresses from web bots by converting them into html escape sequences.
lonny@trinidadusa.netbecomes
lonny@tri nidadusa. netand
<a href="mailto:lonny@trinidadusa.net">lonny@trinidadusa.net</a>becomes
<a href="mailto:lonny@t rinidadus a.net"> lonny@tri nidadus a.net</a>These encoded strings will display perfectly using any web browser but to spam bots, which read the actual page source, they are just gibberish. One customer reports that the amount spam she receieves decreased by more than 50% when she did this.
Converting strings this way is not as hard as it looks. This page makes it easy.
- Don't use Outlook Express.
Our mail server verifies the point of origin of all incoming mail and rejects messages that originate from "phantom" mail servers (servers that have an IP address but don't have a dns record) and from any server whose IP address doesn't match it's dns record. Such messages are bounced without ceremony or notice.
Since most spam attempts to hide or mispreresent its point of origin (because spam is illegal in some places and the spammer seldom knows the geographical location of his victim), this weeds out about 75% of unsolicited spam but effects almost no legitimate email.
The activities listed below are at best impolite and at worst illegal. Since we have no desire to share a cell with you, we might have to deactivate your account if you insist on doing these things:
- Unauthorized copying of copyrighted material. In other words stealing.
- Exporting software or technical information in violation of U.S. export control laws. These laws are mostly antiquated and stupid, but they are still the law.
- Posting or emailing make-money-fast scams or pyramid letters.
- Threatening bodily harm, property damage or humiliation to individuals or groups.
- Fraud
- Attempting to access the accounts of others, or attempting to penetrate the security of our servers (or anyone else's).
- Harassing others by mail-bombing, denial-of-service attacks, etc.
- Distributing viruses
- Spamming
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WWW.TRINIDADUSA.NET:
Serving Trinidad, Walsenburg, Aguilar, Cokedale, LaVeta, Gardner and most places in between!