Online e-mail and virii question

Bri

Dunno about the spelling of virii but anyway...

Wondering about the way my online vodafone.ie e-mail account is regularly getting hit with these replies - from postmasters, etc.

The following e-mail contained and virus and was rejected

Of course they're to random addresses and I didn't send 'em in the first place yada yada yada.
What I'm wondering is how to control this? Vodafone is a terrible website with 1 big advantage - text alerts for incoming e-mail...so I'm gonna keep using it. They've mildly updated their 'protection' but you still can only specify limited custom filters. And I'm not willing to change address. I can't put a filter in to delete auto-postermaster returns cos then I'll never know if a mail bounced!

I've had this 'forwarding' virus problem for about a year now ever since blaster or whatever worm it was that was huge back then...I don't get the original 25+ a day but they're still coming. Tonight:

Attachment Virus name Action taken

---

bill.zip I-Worm.NetSky.b Message Deleted

Is there anyway to stop these being forwarded on?

Raskolnikov

Bri wrote:

Dunno about the spelling of virii but anyway...

The plural of a computer virus is viruses

As for your problem? I can't help, I'd like to here from people who can solve the problem though. My O2 account is worthless because of spam

Skud

I can't help either to to stop spam there is some programs on download.com, maybe they are only for outlook express though. otherwise email vodafone?

Question(rather than starting a new thread): Is it possible to get a program or any other way of getting all your emails to be viewed together? I know there is the pop server/forwarding thing but looking around i can't find it on my hotmail (was there before they update of new skin etc) and it's not on my two college accounts which is a prob. Can anyone help with this? I tired googling to find a program but no results came up... I would prefer to view this at college so an all in one solution that doesn't need to be saved on a comp would be the more desired one for me...

Bri

Thanks anyway.

Syth

Bri wrote:

Vodafone is a terrible website with 1 big advantage - text alerts for incoming e-mail

If you're using Linux I can think of an easy way to get text alerts with any email account. There's a programme called o2sms which can send your free web texts (for any network) without having to log onto the site. I saw a tutorial on writing a perl script that could log onto a TV listing page and view the details, it wouldn't be hard to write a script to log onto you web based email account (any web based email account), check if there is any new messages and then text you. Heck you could tell it to specifically ignore 'postmaster' type emails. You could set the programme to log on ever 2/5/10 minutes. Of course you'd need broadband

Bri

Brilliant idea - I have everything needed but Linux! Pity.

Thanks alot though.

mneylon

Bri - the problem is rather hard to avoid. Basically your email address is being forged in headers sent by viruses and you are getting warnings from badly configured mailservers that are blocking the viruses.
Once upon a time this was considered to be a good thing, but nowadays most viruses have their own smtp engine and forge the "from" headers..

Bri

Yup Blacknight. So it's just tough? I gathered it would be

fragile

o2sms is a perl script, so Linux is not a requirement only perl. It works fine in Windows with ActiveState Perl.

Does Vodafone email have bayesian spam filtering?

I would recommend switching to GMail, which has pretty good spam detection. There are a lot of gmail notifiers available, and you could easily configure one of these to use the o2sms script to send a text message. Of course this would require you to have an always-on internet connection.

duridian

Sometimes these messages can be hoaxes as well, which try to encourage you to delete legistimate files from your system. For example the Jdbgmgr.exe file hoax

Bri

I'm on a 24-hr college LAN here so it's not too bad but I dislike the idea of my laptop having to stay on all the time including when I'm not here...

I have a gmail account but I use vodafone for 'official' e-mails. More and more now I can barely get in to check these mails though even on this connection - such a terrible site (and company).

I was thinking...if I used gmails forwarding facility to forward a copy onto vodafone then I'd have an alert too! Only problem is gmail's service is free now but the way it reads is it'll be a premium service in the future (the forwarding option I mean).

# Automatic forwarding to another email account
We're testing a new feature that lets you forward new incoming messages to any email account you want. It's free during the test and you can set it up in seconds. Even set up filters to forward only some of your messages. It's your mail. Get it the way you want it.

:rolleyes:

Syth

fragile wrote:

o2sms is a perl script, so Linux is not a requirement only perl. It works fine in Windows with ActiveState Perl.

Oh yeah, that could work. I forgot about Perl on Windows. You could then easily write a Perl script to log in and check you're email.

detritus

Not to change the subject from fancy scripting access to website services.

Vodafone mail does not implement bayesian filters.

At a system level, Vodafone Ireland use Realtime DNS blacklists to reject known sources of SPAM or servers widely considered as unsecured or vulnerable to SPAM.

In addition to this, Vodafone mail implements Sieve Filtering which allows for basic filtering based on various criteria described by the email.

Feel free to let Vodafone know that you would like more intensive SPAM filtering through their survey feedback on the website, not sure it would be a 'free' service though.

Blub2k4

It's not spam he is complaining about, it is replies from servers where they receive a mail with a forged header from him saying he sent them a virus, which he didn't.
He needs a filter implemented which filters out mails from postmaster@ when the body contains the word virus, dunno how he would implement that without being able to build his own subject/content filtering rules.

seagizmo

Blub2k4 wrote:

He needs a filter implemented which filters out mails from postmaster@ when the body contains the word virus, dunno how he would implement that without being able to build his own subject/content filtering rules.

You can in using Vodafone Mail, they have filters that are server side (including blacklists), so they filter your email before you even IMAP or POP your account.

You can set it up to filter all email from an address with a subject that fits any criteria, I think you can put in multiple criteria to be sure to be sure pretty handy actually. Especially when you use the email notification feature.

I Rarely get any viruses or Spam to my Vodafone Mail account...

SG

Bri

seagizmo wrote:

You can in using Vodafone Mail, they have filters that are server side (including blacklists), so they filter your email before you even IMAP or POP your account.

I could be wrong here but that's a relatively new thing - less than 12 months ago they heralded how brilliant they were with new anti-spam. Great, how long did it take to setup and why wasn't it there at the start?

seagizmo wrote:

You can set it up to filter all email from an address with a subject that fits any criteria, I think you can put in multiple criteria to be sure to be sure pretty handy actually. Especially when you use the email notification feature.

I'm aware of this - I wrote the original post before Vodafone switched to their new mail look - the old one was unbearably bad to use. You had to add each filter individually, and you could never select more than one. I had 200+ setup at one stage and trying to delete them all was a nightmare. I got the usual spam a bit but then I got regular anti-Turkish spam in german and each new message was a different message that I couldn't understand and hence block, from a new address. I wasn't prepared to lookup individual words that might overlap! The new-look allows multiple editing by the looks of things. At last! Basically, I've the spam under control/I get v. little now but these bouncing mails are becoming an issue.

Blub2k4: I disagree with the postmaster filter idea. Like I said above, "I can't put a filter in to delete auto-postermaster returns cos then I'll never know if a mail bounced!" Plus postmaster is just one of many automatic reply names - I used to block postmaster but then I had to add new ones each time...and in the end I sent an important e-mail with a typo in the address and never got a bounce because of all the filters! I don't see why attachments can't be blocked.[/QUOTE]

seagizmo wrote:

I Rarely get any viruses or Spam to my Vodafone Mail account...

My e-mail address is a very obvious one. Sure I should picked something abstract but I find it's more useful to have an 'official' address that employers, administration, etc. can use.

I've just seen over
here that you can download your vodafone mail which at least helps the slowness part of things (although it's not working at the moment!). To be honest the whole vodafone 'service' reminds me of Irish roads...always behind. So they launch this new mail service with 50mgs (*gasp*) and straight away I find there's no way to forward messages to other accounts whilst leaving a copy in vodafone OR getting a text alert - all in an effort to get my mail quickly and efficiently. Clever people. :rolleyes:

detritus

Bri,

Vodafone mail service definitely required some modernisation, hopefully you should find the quality of the service improves sufficiently.

From the perspective of the postmaster@ option, I would ordinarily route all of these emails to a 'maybe-junk' folder and periodically scan through it for anything important before binning the lot, works reasonably well for me and as you point out, reduces the risk of losing valid bounce/delivery failure messages, up to you really.

Im no business genius, but I hardly imagine that delivering a service to customers which they can use for the simple purpose of getting free email notification without actually using its service for some other account (by way of auto forward) makes good/great business sense. The autoforward feature is there to facilitate customers who want to redirect their mail to an external account for whatever reason. Deliberately doing so has the side effect of losing notificiations and keeping copies, sorry.

If this is a feature which you feel would be of value to you, feel free to submit this on the survey feedback and this will be routed to the appropriate marketing channels. No promises of course.

Bri

detritus, after reading some of your posts I'm guessing you've some sorta connection to vodafone?!

Thanks for the reply. The folder option is a good one - and thanks to the new layout of VMail I guess it's feasible now - i.e. your folders are always visible and not tucked away as before.

I get your point about the auto-forward. Thing is I'm still gonna be paying them €x a month and it's their 'added' services' that are presumably there to distinguish them and their fellow competitors. The reason I'm even resorting to forwarding to my gmail (and the reason I even have a gmail account) is because vodafone was/is/probably will be slower than a sloth on sedatives. I don't know how the marketing department don't seem to care that it takes 3 pages to get to your e-mail. I regularly give up on vodafone during peak hours on the network here.

TBH, I'm not just a grumbling little customer scared to act on my words - I might come across as that! - I've given CS so much feedback in the last few years I think I've had my fair share...and I've seen how little the company care about me too.

Thanks though.

detritus

You reckon ?

Hopefully, you will find over the next while that things improve significantly enough that you will not need to resort to calling CS to complain. Personally, I really like the new client and the voice and faxmail integration is really quite good ... great when you want to save an archive of voicemails (or just dont have your phone handy... especially when you are abroad or on holidays)

Bookmark
http://www.vodafone.ie/myvodafone/messaging/vodamail/index.jsp

If you want to cut down the number of clicks to get to your email.

Bri

Yeah I'll give yiz that much - it's an improvement all right. Still getting used to it. I've turned off forwarding now alswell because the site is actually loading! Perhaps they should give a warning in advance of upcoming big maintance! It was all a bit hard to stomach when webtext was down for about a week - I base my phone package on them!

Thanks for the URL - I actually used to use one of those before (when your session times out and you click on mail but it gives you the login page...thinking I was being really smart) but the problem is I use vodafone from all over the place on tons of different computers. At least the address you gave me is fairly easy to remember!

Now if I could only get my mail to download...

But seriously thanks for the info.

Edit: The voicemail option is a good idea but even on this 2Mbps+ line it takes a very long time to open...Ok I'll stop!