Email Filters Working Against You

From personal experience, I've had emails blocked that I needed by my IPS. Emials from the utility companies and other services simply dropping from my inbox because a computer labeled it spam. Even after I figured out what was going wrong, I could not get the ISP to correct it even after adding the requested emails to my white list.

There is a new experiment at hand that puts the ISPs to the test and holds there feet to the fire. Visit My Computer Nightmares to learn more.

The New & Improved Computer Nightmares

So far this site has been a big hit... Upgraded from Blogger to Wordpress and put it on it's own domain. Still migrating information, but should be caught up by 3/07/08
http://mycomputernightmares.com

Update Of An Old Favorite

Let me introduce you to a little tool known as CCleaner. CCleaner just released it's latest updates. It is a free tool that will in one swoop remove unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. Cleans up the Recycle Bin, Temporary files and Log files. Works with Firefox, Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Office XP, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and more...

All this is fine and dandy at optimizing your windows and you can down load it HERE - but you did not let me finish... You need to know the rest of the story...


False advertising has duped many consumers into buying cheap worthless imitation Computer Cleaning Software - "disk-washer-erasers" that do not work - you might as well "throw your money away". If you have recently been the victim of a scam by one of these fly-by-night outfits you are strongly urged to "get your money back as quickly as possible, and not to use the Software under any circumstances because it could even damage your hard disk! If you take risks you could damage your computer and go to jail!" Because even if you downloaded something by accident and do not know it's there, you are still liable.

Deleting "Internet Cache and History" will NOT protect you. Formatting a disk does NOT delete the contents. Pressing Delete does NOT delete pictures.

Everything you EVER DID is STILL STORED IN YOUR PC.

CLICK HERE TO CLEAN YOUR PC PROPERLY

Where Are All My Emails?

I've come across an interesting problem recently. I have customers calling me saying that they are getting email addresses in there inbox that that they don't know who the email address belongs to. That and they aren't getting any of the emails they should be getting. The first instance of this took a while to figure out, but I've seen it a few times sense then. I'm still tracking down "how" it happened, but when I did deeper, I found that a filter had been added to delete any email addressed to the originally intended recipient.

I'm not sure yet if its an email scam or just one of the latest email hoaxes. The main symptom in getting tons of junk mail addressed to other people. I've only seen it on webmail accounts and not the MSN, Yahoo, and Gmail services. It stands to reason that it would only happen if an email was opened inside the webmail. In general I talk people out of Outlook because of all the problems it keeps having to fix. Thunderbird is a far better choice, but even then the anti-virus on your personal computer needs to remain updated.

I just wanted to pass that along... if you are getting emails where you don't know who the email address belongs to - check your filters. Also if you notice that you are not getting your emails - check your filters.

Firewall

A firewall protects your computer or a local area network( LAN )from external intrusions. It may be a hardware device or a software program running on a secure host computer. In either case, it must have at least two network interfaces, one for the network it is intended to protect, and one for the network it is exposed to. More than one type of firewall can be used to provide extra network security. A firewall can also screen internal traffic on a network, separating different departments or branches of a large company. In some cases, a business will configure a proxy server to block employee access to certain types of Internet content, such as streaming audio or video.

A firewall examines all traffic routed between the two networks to see if it meets certain criteria. If it does, it is routed between the networks, otherwise it is stopped. A firewall filters both inbound and outbound traffic. It can also manage public access to private networked resources such as host applications. It can be used to log all attempts to enter the private network and trigger alarms when hostile or unauthorized entry is attempted.

Firewalls can filter packets based on their source and destination addresses and port numbers. This is known as address filtering. Firewalls can also filter specific types of network traffic. This is also known as protocol filtering because the decision to forward or reject traffic is dependent upon the protocol used, for example HTTP, ftp or telnet. Firewalls can also filter traffic by packet attribute or state. If your home or business computer uses DSL, a cable modem, or some other type of always-on Internet connection, a firewall is extremely important.

There are two access denial methodologies used by firewalls. A firewall may allow all traffic through unless it meets certain criteria, or it may deny all traffic unless it meets certain criteria . The type of criteria used to determine whether traffic should be allowed through varies from one type of firewall to another. Firewalls may be concerned with the type of traffic, or with source or destination addresses and ports. They may also use complex rule bases that analyse the application data to determine if the traffic should be allowed through. How a firewall determines what traffic to let through depends on which network layer it operates at.

A Masters student in computer applications interested in writing articles, editing and proof reading Contact at: leenavijayakumar@gmail.com