The message .com
from "La Puce" contains these words:

) My mate downloaded Thunderbird yesterday. He's got mac. I don't see
why I should have two different email system when OE seem to be fine.


'Seems' is the operative word.

The coding was written by a collection of wunches: to begin with in an
effort to catch up, the official Muco$not line being that 'The Internet
won't catch on'.

When it did, and it was seen by them to have done so, and that it was
growing exponentially, they performed their usual grab for power and
wrote IE and OE to be non-compliant of protocols, and bundled it up in
Windows so that most Windows users would run them as the easiest
options, and that anyone who didn't run them wouldn't get the full
'benefit' of all the eye candy and other unnecessary rubbish they
included.

The script-kiddies soon found that IE and OE were full of holes through
which you could drive an epidemic, let alone a single virus, and this
they proceeded to do.

If you run either (include Outpuke in that too) and aren't really savvy
about these things, your computer will soon become full of scumware. You
won't notice a lot of it, because it will sneak out onto the WWW when
you think in your innocence that you are connecting to a perfectly
legitimate website, which well you may be, and in sneaking out, may post
lots of copies of itself to everyone in your address book, and perhaps,
if you have such in a file on your computer, details of your bank
account, your card(s), numbers, PIN, etc.

You will think that the pop-up messages telling you that you have n
errors in your registry, or system, and to go to some website to get a
fix, are Windows messages, because they are made to look like them. Then
you will either pick up another virus, trojan or worm, or download the
program, for which you will be asked a considerable sum. Of course, it
will pretend to find lots of errors, and offer to fix them. After you've
paid.

In paying, of course, you give them details of your account...

Most of this activity is preventable, but you need to know a bit about
how to do it. I gather from your posts that this is not the case.

So, my advice would be, use Firefox or Opera as a browser, and
Thunderbird as a mail and news client.

Then install a good AV program, and some proper adware and spyware
killers/preventers.

I run AVG, SpyWareBlaster, Spybot Search and Destroy, AdAware, and
HijackThis, as well as probably the most secure mail and news software
available, Firefox, and Opera.

OE, Outlook and IE are disabled and can't run.

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
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