Flag ISP over spoofing, hijacking

Q: In regard to the person whose e-mail address was spoofed, could he have set up another account or two? It seems to me that he could use them to send and e-mail himself and block the main account.

S. LINCOLN

A: Yes, and I mentioned that option in the answer. Another smart move for victims of spoofing —- which happens when spammers use your e-mail address —- is to contact your ISP. Since the spam uses the ISP’s address, it has an interest in stopping the problem, too. If nothing else, it may offer technical help. In fact, our next question involves a situation so serious that the ISP certainly would want to know about it.

Q: I have been getting messages about undeliverable mail for two months. It comes in various forms and involves messages I have not sent. Sometimes I get over 200 overnight. Recently I got over 1,000 of these notices in a 24-hour period.

BILL DALY

A: There are two possibilities —- someone is spoofing your e-mail address and using it to spam or, most frightening, your computer has been hijacked by spammers. With that many notices of e-mails you did not send, hijacking is a possibility.

Here’s how hijacking often works: An e-mail with an attachment is downloaded and opened. Hidden in that attachment is a program that allows the spammer to take over your computer to send out e-mail. Unfortunately, when a spammer goes to the trouble of hijacking a computer, it’s often because he plans to send out the worst kind of spam, often material that is illegal.

If that’s the case, your ISP may cut off your ability to send e-mail or even believe that you’re sending the stuff (which, in a way, you would be). And if the spammer is sending illegal material you could face awkward questions from authorities. It needs fixing.

Contact your ISP immediately. I also would make sure the computer is free of the program that lets the spammer take control of it. You may need to consult a computer service to make sure that’s done correctly.

Help from a reader

I read your column about browsers. On the speed issue, Internet Explorer has lagged for quite a while because it can only support two connections to a server. Here’s an example of how this can be slow … when you navigate a map that displays hotel prices, Starbucks locations, attractions and airports, these are all separate downloads.

In Internet Explorer, the downloads look like this:

First Download Set: Hotel Prices and Starbucks

Second Download Set: Attractions and Airports

In Firefox, the downloads look like this:

First Download Set: Hotel Prices and Starbucks and Attractions and Airports

Firefox uses the full bandwidth to simultaneously download all of the files, where Internet Explorer (prior to the 8 beta) only let you download 2 at a time.

LYNWOOD BISHOP

Bill’s note: Lynwood is a computer professional and serves as an example of a point I often make to my editor. I learn more from readers than they’ll ever learn from me. I edited his e-mail for length.

HAVE A QUESTION?

Please send your questions to Bill Husted at tecbud@bellsouth.net. While he reads every e-mail, not all are answered. E-mails are selected for publication based on the likelihood that the answers will be of general interest.