Earthlink cares!
Phil Weldon
overloaded mailboxes
Chat Transcript
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info: 'Sridhar A' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat,
how may I help you today?
pwe...@mindspring.com: I receive a message from Earthlink stating
that my mailbox was nearing capacity. No lie! Don't you think the message
should have acknowledged the massive spread of Worm.Automat.AHB which has
sent over a thousand infected messages to my e-mail addres in the last
twenty-four hours, each of which is about 105 KBytes long? If I didn't have
an e-mail client constantly connected this flood would fill up a 10 MByte
mail box in less than an hour.
Sridhar A:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.s...@mm.html
Sridhar A: Please use the link above which has the information on the
issue you are facing and how to resolve the issue.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Yes, but what is Earthlink going to do? I am
protected from infection, but I can't stop the flow of infected e-mail into
my mailbox. Earthlink can. The Symantec page doesn't speak to the flood of
bogus and infected emails. I take responsibility for keeping my systems
uninfected. Earthlink must take responsibility for filtering at the POP3
server end. If ISP's don't take this responsibility seriously then the
internet won't open for business one day by the middle of the week.
Sridhar A: I am sorry you are receiving a virus in your email, but
there is really nothing we can do here to stop it. If you want, you can try
emailing the person the viruses are coming from & inform them that they may
be infected or set up filters in your email program. I would also advise not
opening any attachments you receive unless you are expecting them to arrive
& are you know who the sender is. If you would like help on setting up email
filters, please visit
http://www.earthlink.net/internet/email/filtering/.#PFR#/DUT/S-A/Virus-ReceivingInEmail
Sridhar A: Are you still with me?
pwe...@mindspring.com: And by the way, Symantec is late to the game
on this one. Prior to 18SEP03 the Norton Anti-virus 'Live Update' had not
included the definitions for this worm. Only if you had up-to-date security
patches on your mail program or had done a manual virus definition update
were you protected. Filters at my end will do NOTHING to keep my mailbox
free.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Filters at the Earthlink end are the ONLY
solution.
Sridhar A: I suggest you to contact Microsoft for any further
assistance in this regard as the problem seems to be with their operating
system.
pwe...@mindspring.com: I have adequate, up-to-date, antiviral and
antivermal protection. But on an attack as massive as this one the ISP's
need to do the filtering.
Sridhar A: I am sorry there is no way we can set the email filtering
at our end for the millions of email messages.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Bull! Are you saying that Earthlink can't
maintain the intergrity of their email service.
Sridhar A: We will maintain the email service, but we can't scan all
the email messages through our servers.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Well, Earthlink is going to have to do EXACTLY
that. Otherwise your service will fail to provide contracted service to
millions of your customers who have uninfected systems but can't receive
email or soon, other services.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Read the headlines on Monday.
Sridhar A: Sure we will work on the issue.
pwe...@mindspring.com: Thanks. This is going to be the most
destructive worm so far by orders of magnitude. It is already so massive
that it is supressing ordinary spam.
Sridhar A: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat.
Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
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Phil Weldon, pwe...@mindspring.com
Michael Brown
news:sH9bb.47965$Aq2....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Here's the transcript of an on-line chat I just had with Earthlink about
> overloaded mailboxes
Hmm, interesting :) This is what my ISP says on the issue:
http://xtra.co.nz/help/0,,4128-1599882,00.html
I presume you can "opt out" of this if you really don't like it. Expect the
"viruses trashed" to spike heavily tomorrow ... their last update was on
Friday, which was before things got really bad judging by this NG.
They are completely blocking the suspect files for email (sent one I found
on a newsgroup to myself and nothing came through or back) but are not
blocking them for news yet.
--
Michael Brown (still without a single swen32 email)
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more :)
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz - My inbox is always open
fish
3000 pieces of email per day. Most of which is SPAM!
Over the last 21 days we have received 2982 infected emails. Most were the
W32.Sobig variant (W32.Sobig.F@mm way in the lead). In the months of July
and August we received just over 200 infected emails monthly, mostly
W32.Klez.H@mm.
In the last few days (since Friday) we have only gotten 25 infected emails
with Worm.Automat.AHB.
Symantec's Antivirus Corp Edition has quite a bit of flexibility. I can
remove the attached virus and deliver the empty email to the recipient. I
can also completely delete the email and the recipient would never know
he/she got a virus.
BTW: We tried SPAM filters that reference the multitude of SPAM list
available. We had way too many of our major clients filtered out and deemed
as SPAMERS. Companies like Panasonic and Pioneer!? Its all too easy to be
added to SPAM lists and its nearly impossible to get off. Besides that, you
can filter by address and content but it was hardly worth the coupe of
thousand dollars for the application.
Opt-out and delete is what I tell our employees.
"Phil Weldon" <pwe...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:sH9bb.47965$Aq2....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Wookie
society today ... to much crap from people you don't even know or don't want
to know.
"fish" <nos...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:F8ibb.65942$BS1.27...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
Overlord
... and what did you put in the survey window?<EG>
I have gotten the returned email crap for a couple of weeks on several
hotmail accounts.
They seem to have dried up here lately tho.
I've never gotten them in my COX email accounts.
~~~~~~
Bait for spammers:
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost
postmaster@[127.0.0.1]
~~~~~~
Remove "spamless" to email me.
David Maynard
> Junk Mail in Snail Mail is almost as bad as SPAM. Says something about our
> society today ... to much crap from people you don't even know or don't want
> to know.
Well, it's not quite as bad. For one, snail mail actually costs them money for
each one sent, not to mention printing costs. SPAM is almost 'free' once past
the initial setup.
And for those reasons is the second difference. Snail mail 'spam' tends to be
from 'normal' type businesses as opposed to offers to make your wanger wang
better, "Hi, I'm Teresa and I have a new web cam," and other less discrete offers.
Patrick Finucane
> Sridhar A: Sure we will work on the issue.
> pwe...@mindspring.com: Thanks. This is going to be the most
> destructive worm so far by orders of magnitude. It is already so massive
> that it is supressing ordinary spam.
> Sridhar A: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat.
> Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
> info: Chat session has been terminated by the site operator. When you
> close the chat window a survey window will open. Please take a minute to
> fill in the survey and let us know how your chat session was.
>
> Phil Weldon, pwe...@mindspring.com
I contacted their support by phone. The solution's available; dump Earthlink or create a
new inbox account and contact your people in your address list with the new address. I
never thought I'd hear one of their people be agreeable to dumping them.