ConnectNC offers interactive or announcement type mailing lists, starting at $15 per month.
For more information, and to read the terms of service, please navigate to this page: http://lists.connectnc.com/
This is a common situation these days. Malicious code has been developed to allow spammers to distribute their junk mail a variety of ways.
In the old days, we’d tell people just to be careful about posting their email addresses on web sites or newsgroups. Today, all it takes is an infected machine on which your email address is saved in an address book!
In order to combat spam, it’s now important for all computer users to keep their machines secured using the latest security software and by making sure operating system updates are done. Sometimes even this is not enough, since modern coders can defeat most commercially available Internet Security applications. Why can’t they use their powers for good instead of evil?
Be careful about designating email addresses or domains as trusted. Many spam filters, including our own, allow users to whitelist specific email addresses or entire domains. Imagine what could happen if you whitelisted the entire hotmail.com domain? That means anyone sending you a message with a return address from hotmail.com is going to get past the spam filter. Unfortunately, you can no longer whitelist your OWN email address! Spammers are sending junk mail to you with your own return address!
What’s a person to do? Make sure your security software is up to date. If you haven’t installed anything, please call ConnectNC to have a tech perform a security scan on your system and install your software. If everyone maintained good system security, we’d go a long way towards eliminating spam that comes from infected machines.
Last, but not least, never, ever buy from a spammer. They’re not sending you junk mail for fun. They’re doing it to make money. About ten years ago, one spammer told me that his employer made $30,000 in one day after they sent out unsolicited commercial email to a very large number of addresses. Their hosting and email accounts were cancelled, but it was well worth it to them. So, let’s try to make spamming an unprofitable venture. We should all agree that we’ll never buy anything that was promoted in an unsolicited message we received.
AOL has something they call an Email Feedback Report. ISPs can register with AOL so they’ll be notified any time an email message is reported as spam. Unfortunately for the sender, the entire contents of the message are left intact for the ISP to review. The Email Feedback Report protects the identity of the recipient, but not the sender. Therefore, any message reported to AOL as spam (either rightly or wrongly) gets sent to the sender’s ISP.
What does this potentially mean? It means that a sender’s love notes, racist or sexist jokes and personal and business information are revealed to the sender’s ISP if that message is reported as spam.
We try to inform our customers when a message has been returned to us by AOL. In MOST of the cases, the sender reports back that the recipient did NOT (either intentionally or accidentally) mark their message as spam. Therefore, we’re making the assumption that there’s some flaw in AOL’s mail system that tags messages as spam in error.
Because we see several of these a week, my own personal policy is to never send anything I would want to have kept confidential to people with AOL email addresses.
I just wanted to pass this along so people will be aware and take steps to maintain their privacy.
We, at ConnectNC, have always had a passion for Internet Safety for kids and adults. About 6 years ago we offered a filtering service called Bess. It allowed us to actually filter at our data center before a dialup or DSL customer even received input from a website. The controls were saved here via an interface on the customer’s computer. It was a really neat thing that could’ve helped a lot of families. However, we were ahead of our time and had to cancel the service due to the costs involved that we just weren’t recouping at that point. We now have joined up with a few non-profit organizations to help spread the message and education about Internet Safety to kids in schools in our area of Southern Pines and Pinehurst, NC. If your school is interested in having us come and spread the Internet Safety education please feel free to contact us. With all the community groups online, chatting, email involving sexual exploitation, harrassment, bullying occuring now, Internet Safety is on the forefront of peoples’ minds and souls.
I have 2 kids who use the Internet. I talk to them on a daily basis about the risks but also about the positive gains from doing so. It is one of my passions to help other parents understand how to be aware of risks and avoid potential issues before they occur, and to teach kids about the joys and dangers of Internet usage. I have a Girl Scout troop and believe me – the girls have heard this from me many times and will continue to do so. And at the ages of 8-10 they are SO interested and ask many ‘what if’ questions that it thrills me!
I will continue to blog about Internet safey, as well as the positive aspects of joining communities online. The balance, just like everything else in life, is what must be achieved.
There’s been a recent influx of phishing attempts against our subscribers. If you receive a message like the one below, please delete it immediately! We will NEVER send any such messages to our subscribers. In addition, please do not ever send your login and password to ANYONE, including us. We will not request it by email.
Please call our tech support number any time if you have any questions or have received any suspicious email.
Tech Support: 866-234-4883 – 24 hours a day
ConnectNC, Inc. 420 SW Broad St Southern Pines, NC 28387 910-695-7068
Go to our home page to login to webmail
-----Original Message----- From: Information From PINEHURST.NET Webmail TEAM [mailto:info_managementcenter@pinehurst.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:07 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Comfirm Your PINEHURST.NET Webmail Account !!! Dear PINEHURST.NET Webmail Account Owner, This message is from PINEHURST.NET messaging center to all PINEHURST.NET email account owners On Wednesday, July 16th, 2008, from 11:35 AM until 7:35 PM, all Mailhub systems will undergo regularly schPINEHURST.NETled maintenance in PINEHURST.NET Access to your e-mail via the Webmail client will be unavailable for some time during this maintenance window. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center - see homepage. We are, deleting all PINEHURST.NET email account to create more space for new accounts. To complete your PINEHURST.NET Webmail account, you must reply to this email immediately and enter your CORRECT PASSWORD here (*********) immediately for upgrading, Failure to do this will immediately your Email address here(***************************) deactivated from our database. Once we have updated your account current records will be sent your Online Account and your service will not be interrupted and will continue working as normal. Your Email Address Here ************* Correct Password Here ********* Date of Birth *********** Final Notification, Please Protect Your PINEHURST.NET Webmail From Being Closed. To provide easy access to all your account administration functions, we have moved these functions to easy Webmail at http://webmail.pinehurst.net you can also confirm your email address by logging into your webmail account. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for using PINEHURST.NET! The PINEHURST.NET Webmail TEAM" No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.4.11/1554 - Release Date: 7/15/2008 6:03 PM
There are individuals who may send email to you, asking for your account password, or asking you to login to a web site to change your password. These people are posing as technical support people in an attempt to get your account password from you. Once they have your account password, they login to webmail and use your address to send out thousands of “spam” messages across the Internet.
There are a few steps you can take to make sure your account isn’t “hijacked” to use for spamming (sending junk email). First, and most important, never give your password to anyone who is requesting it by email. Don’t login to any web site to change your password or enter your current password on the request of anyone by email. If we feel your account has been compromised we’ll change your password for you. We’ll never email to ask you to do it.
You can read more about this kind of activity, called “phishing,” by going to the following URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
Second, please make sure your password is strong enough to prevent someone from guessing it. If your username and password are the same, you’re a potential target for account hijacking. Your password should contain upper and lower case letters, numbers and some other character(s), such as symbols or punctuation. Here are a few examples of good and bad passwords.
GOOD passwords ————– M9ADu%3wQ! (good) NtiL@e_D5o1sig (even better – more characters)
BAD passwords ————- 1234 (one of the most commonly used and easily guessed passwords) spaniel (a word in the dictionary)
Please check your password here: http://tinyurl.com/safe-passwords If your password strength is not rated “strong” or “best,” it should be changed immediately!
If you have ANY reason to believe that someone has guessed your password, please change it immediately.
Your ConnectNC Account Manager: https://accounts.connectnc.net/
Ask the Expert is a free online web-forum where Myeloma and Bone Cancer specialist, Dr. James R. Berenson offers medical answers to questions surrounding quality of life and longevity issues for patients living with this rare form of cancer. Hosted here at ConnectNC!
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I recently received a Hallmark greeting card from a “friend” in my email in box. The message was NOT, however, a greeting card from a friend. It was an attempted attack on my machine. Since I use a Mac, I didn’t have to worry about this particular trojan. The evildoers who propagated this trojan want you to install zapchast on your Windows computer by clicking on their link and use it to do bad deeds. More information can be found here >> http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/SearchResults.aspx?query=zapchast
What can you do to protect yourself? First of all, install a reputable security application on your PC, from a company such as Symantec or McAfee and KEEP IT UPDATED! We can do this for you as part of our Virtual IT service. I don’t open anything with attachments from people I don’t know, or anything that I haven’t asked for or know about in advance, really. In fact, I don’t open greeting cards and those types of things ever, since I have an aversion to animated stuff with what I consider to be unpleasant music. I still send greeting cards via snail mail.
If you have Internet or network security needs, please give our office a call and schedule an appointment. Call (910) 695-7068, ext. 10. Be careful out there!
When analyzing how much of the email that comes into web hosting accounts, we discovered that it’s 94% spam and viruses. Thanks to our mail filtering device, most of that is blocked or quarantined. I went to google to look for stats, and found that our figure agrees with what’s reported by most other ISPs. A graph from one of our mail filters shows the severity of the spam problem, which is universal.
Increases in junk mail has required us to invest in mail filtering appliances and software, which is the case for many large companies and universities. However, not all companies can afford to make this investment. We offer mail filtering for web sites whether they are hosted with us or not. For a low monthly rate, your domain’s email can be protected. Pricing starts at $13.50 per month, for up to 10 mail accounts.
Using the service is easy. A simple change is made to your DNS. No software needs to be installed on any of your systems. We do still recommend that each of your machines has an anti-virus application installed. While most viruses are email borne, there are still risks associated with simply being connected to the Internet.
For more information, or to sign up, call us at 888-290-4601, extension 22.
Setting up Apple Mail can be accomplished in just a few easy steps.
1. Click on Mail and then Preferences from the menu at the top of the Mail screen.
2. Click on the Accounts icon and then click the + sign in the lower left corner.
3. The General Information window will appear. Fill in your information, based on the example below. Please use your actual email address and information.
4. Click Continue.
5. In the Incoming Mail Server window, complete the required information. Refer to the example below, but replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.
6. Click the Continue button on the Incoming Mail Security window without clicking anything else.
7. Click Continue on the Outgoing Mail Security window.
8. Review the information in the Account Summary Window. If everything is correct, click Continue. If you see any errors, click Go Back.
9. Click on Done, if you’re done! If you want to create another email account, you may do so by clicking on the Create Another Account button.
For more information about setting up Apple Mail, please visit Apple.com.
