Tag Archives: email

Email, Hotmail, Internet, Security, Spam

Spam email from myself? Huh?

January 27, 2012 Computers Made Simple 10 Comments

This morning I received a spam email from my own hotmail account. No, my account hadn’t been hacked. Yes, someone had spoofed my email address (and my name) and had sent it to me using my own email address but from a different IP address. Don’t ask me how they did it but they did. I wanted to block that person from sending me any more emails like that but I didn’t want to block myself, obviously. Every now and then I send an email to myself. Let’s say I change a password on some account on the ‘net. The easiest and most secure way to keep a record of that change is to send it to myself in an email. Of course, I don’t put anything in the email that gives the account that I’ve changed. I use a code. Anyway, here’s how I blocked that person from sending more emails from myself.

As we discovered HERE , it’s easy to find out where an email originates. Using Hotmail as an example, right click any email in its folder (as opposed to having the email open) and choose ‘View message source’. Every email system is a bit different but you can view an email’s source in any of them. If you don’t know how to do it, use Google or ask me in a comment below or on Twitter.

Once you find the source, there will be an IP address at the top. There will also be an email address, in my case it was my own. Since I know that I didn’t send the email, I knew that someone had spoofed the original email. Regardless, the IP address was there. I checked the address, of course, and it turned out to be somewhere in Israel. No problem there, I would block the IP address, not the email.

TIP: If you have the time, it’s always good to block an IP address as opposed to simply blocking an email address. This post is a perfect example of why you’d want to do that.

OK, now I had the IP address and it was an easy task to block it using Hotmail’s great system. It’s described HERE. Once that was done, I can rest assured that I won’t get any more emails from that address, certainly none from my own email address.

A good point to all of this is that if a spammer can send me an email from myself, they can also do other things that will make me think the spam is legitimate. As the Internet changes, you have to keep on your toes to prevent your accounts from being compromised. Make sure you use a good virus and email protection system AND keep reading my posts. If you have questions or concerns about computer or email security, make a comment and I’ll work out an answer for you.

Thanks for reading!

Email, Encryption, Privacy, Security

Hushmail Email Security

December 8, 2011 Computers Made Simple

If you’re concerned about email security, my next few posts will discuss some aspects that you might want to consider. My feeling is that email is far less secure than it used to be, even compared to five or ten years ago. Whether or not anyone is reading your email, you might want to think about some way of securing your private and/or business communications from prying eyes. If you are already involved in illicit activity, you are likely more advanced in this area than I am. All of this is new territory for me. We’ll learn together.

My first stop on this journey is a Canadian web-mail site, Hushmail. Hushmail advertises itself as a ‘free secure email’ provider. It is free and somewhat secure. There is a pro version for use on your own domain but we’ll stick with the free version for now.

Hushmail encrypts your email to other Hushmail users, plain and simple. Once you are logged in, Hushmail provides an encrypted connection. The key to this connection is your password. If, for some reason, your Internet connection is being watched, logging-in to Hushmail will protect everything for you. Your emails are stored on the Hushmail site in encrypted form. Your passphrase isn’t stored anywhere by Hushmail. If you lose your passphrase, you can’t recover it…at least not through Hushmail. It all sounds quite secure, right? It is but Hushmail is very open about its limitations.

I don’t think anyone really reads the EULAs or FAQs that abound in the computer world. Hushmail’s FAQ was both incredibly easy to read and extremely honest. Take some time to read it and you’ll start to understand the limitations of a web-based email security system. Here’s a link to Hushmail’s FAQ: http://www.hushmail.com/about/technology/security/

Hushmail is perfect for the average person who wants a bit of privacy and simplicity with their free web-based email. There are ways to encrypt a regular email on Hotmail or Gmail and I’ll get to those later but for now, Hushmail is worth investigating.

The key to Hushmail is the passphrase. Sure, the email and the connection to Hushmail are encrypted but how can you keep your passphrase secure? That’s the problem, right? If you can manage to come up with a mnemonic passphrase, something that is easy for you to remember but ridiculously hard for anyone else to crack, you’re fine. If you have to write the passphrase down, things get substantially less secure. That’s for you to work out but I’ve got some tips here in another post.

Lastly, if you think that you’re immune to all of this and that no one really cares about your email, check out this PBS documentary. It’s an eye-opener: Nova: The New Thought Police

Thanks for reading!

Email, Internet, Privacy, Security, Spam

Hotmail or Gmail?

December 7, 2011 Computers Made Simple

Hotmail has been around since 1997, at least in its present form with Microsoft. Somehow, it doesn’t have the same cachet as Gmail, even though it’s been around for a lot longer, 2004 compared to 1997. Many of my contacts use Gmail for business, pretty much shunning Hotmail for reasons that I don’t quite understand…other than the sense that Gmail is sounds better. Here’s why I stick to Hotmail.

1. Easier Access – Over the years I’ve gotten used to using MSN chat. Sure, Gmail has Gmail chat but most of my friends around the globe use MSN and/or Skype (or QQ). Since I have my MSN chat open when I’m online, I get instant updates when I get an email from a contact. Additionally, I can access up to five of my Hotmail accounts from one account using the link feature. One sign-in lets me access my business account, my anonymous account (the one I use when I’m signing up for some sketchy-sounding freebie on the ‘net) as well as accounts that are linked to different websites that I own.

2. Sharing – I used to share music on Gmail using the Gmail Drive feature, mentioned here. Gmail gives you over 7 gigabytes of storage. Cool huh? Hotmail gives you 5 gigs of storage in your actual Hotmail account but they also give you 25 gigabytes in your Skydrive section. Cooler, huh? With my 25 gigs of storage, I can share music, videos, epubs, etc. In Gmail I would have to share a password with a trusted friend. In Hotmail all I have to do is send an email to share a folder. I can even allow someone to edit the files if I want. Personally, I find the Skydrive setup much simpler and easier to use than the substantially smaller Gmail storage.

3. The Cachet – If the name Hotmail doesn’t turn your crank, you could choose the ‘live.com’ option when signing up for an account there. Unfortunately you can’t switch your Hotmail to a live account. I think the biggest mistake that Microsoft made was choosing the Hotmail name but that’s done, can’t change it now. At that time, everything was new and fresh and, yes, hot on the brand new Internet. Things that you take for granted now weren’t even thought of then. When you actually think about it, the name Hotmail is no different from Gmail except that each is associated with what some consider the black and white of the computer world. While most of us use Windows, do we actually trust Microsoft? Somehow, Google is considered the white knight of the Internet, despite being just as monopolistic as Microsoft.

4. Spam Blocking – I’ve written here before about using the excellent spam blockers in Hotmail. Personally, I don’t see much of a difference between the Hotmail or Gmail spam settings. I get spam in each, lots of it. Blocking spam in Hotmail is much easier. Select the messages in the junk folder, choose Block at the top and poof, they’re blocked. You can block a whole domain or a single account just as easily. With Gmail you have to set up a filter. Finicky, in my opinion, and time consuming. Give me ‘click and block’ any time.

5. Finding an Email – Both Hotmail and Gmail have superb search features. It’s a tie there. However Hotmail allows you to arrange your emails in five different ways. If you click the ‘Select’ button over the email date, you can arrange your whole inbox by date, by who the emails are from, by the subject, by size or by conversation. I use this feature all the time. If I can’t remember any key word in an email, I can find what I’m looking for by arranging the emails in another way. It sounds strange but it happens. Order something online from Amazon but you can’t remember the title of the book? See all of the Amazon emails instantly by choosing ‘from’. You can then find the email quickly if you have a vague idea of the date of the order. If not, you can go through them one by one. I can’t do that in Gmail. (If I’m missing this, please let me know.)

6. One Gmail Plus – I’m sure there are perfectly good reasons to choose Gmail over Hotmail, other than the name, but I can think of only one. Choosing a series of messages in Gmail is much easier, choose one then hold down the shift key while choosing another one down the line. All messages in between will be chosen. That’s it!

What Do You Think? If I’ve missed something, let me know. Both Gmail and Hotmail are secure. I really prefer having my email left on the server instead of having it come into my home computer before I read it. I’m always online anyway so what’s the point of downloading all of my messages to work offline? If there is something on my site server or my ISP’s server, as soon as I open Outlook or Thunderbird, that bit of virus or malware gets sucked into my computer. Give me web-based mail any day. If you change ISPs, you have to go through the change of address motions which might or might not get to all of your clients or email contacts. I’ve had Hotmail since 1998, same account, and I’ve never lost an email.

Thanks for reading! Comments are very welcome.

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun