 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
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A hearty PC Update happy new financial year and welcome to everyone, especially our new members. That's about 150 to 200 in a normal month. And what a diverse group you are! Each month a list of new members might include accountants, job seekers, solicitors, doctors, entertainers, scientists, clerical workers, retired people, students, entire families, operators of small and home-based businesses, managers in multinational corporations, public servants and entrepreneurs. As our president points out in his column this month, if you think this is just a group of geeks, you are in for a big surprise.
We all use computers to do different things, but we want to get a little more out of our computing experiences.
Spam, spam, spam and spam...
Last month I received some spam with a new twist on the standard spam scam, the message went something like this:
> Hi Carol
> Thanks for the information you
> sent me. It really worked! I think
> you'll find this site useful too.
> <http://www.shonkyspamscam.
> com> Let me know what you
> think.
> Mike
I'd never heard of Mike (this particular Mike, anyway). I hadn't sent him any information. I didn't check out the ShonkySpamScam site. I didn't let him know what I thought. Some people must fall for these tricks, otherwise the scammsters wouldn't waste their time.
Funnily enough, Ash Nallawalla received a similar message, or so it seemed at first. In fact Ash's message was a mixup - the result of a series of unique circumstances, one of which was that one of our members had an incomplete e-mail address in his or her setup. For example, it was as if instead of displaying cad@melbpc.org.au for my address, my mail program displayed simply "@melbpc.org.au".
According to Ash, who is on the Melb PC Internet Admin team and sees the remains of mangled messages that never get where they're going, incomplete e-mail addresses are a common problem.
I think that it is easy to miss, because unless you see your own messages, you don't usually see your own "from" line. Even if you do, if your message is in the midst of a crowded newsgroup posting, you might not notice that it's not quite right.
If you're not sure about your setup, use the melbpc.test newsgroup. That's what it's for, testing! Test your newsreader's setup with a post to melbpc.test. You should see your full e-mail address, and your name (or your first initial and your last name). Your organisation should be "Melbourne PC User Group, Australia."
While you're at it, test your e-mail program's set up. Send a message to yourself. Test your Web browser too, if you use different programs for all these functions. (I do.) Respond to a "mailto" hyperlink at a Web site and send a copy of the message to yourself, send a message to yourself too, using the browser's e-mail window.
These tests also give you a chance to check your signature file (sig file). I occasionally see messages with the sample or default sig file, which looks silly appended to an e-mail message. Check that your sig file isn't too long, conventional Netiquette standards say sig files should four or fewer lines.
You don't have to pay more for messages with longer sig files, but you will eventually run into someone with a militant sig file attitude, and then watch out.
That's all for me this month, take care.
Reprinted from the July 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
