OK,

Amongst other things, I have a couple of webmail accounts.

One of them has "gone stupid" over the last couple of days, I've had the accounts for a couple of years and understand that the longer you keep the e-mail address, the more likely you are to get spam.

Anyway, apart from the usual offers of porn, viagra, credit cards, etc, it seems that recently, the vast majority of stuff that's getting to the inbox, is "non-delivery notifications" for what seems to be porn spam, using my e-mail address.

I have checked my windows install and found 23 files that are refered to by "adaware" as "data mining" files.

Obviously, I have deleted them, and checked for trojans etc.

The linux related part of the question is that could these "files" get into my linux installations. How would they get in? I usually have the system set to accept cookies so could they have got into either the linux or windows system via a cookie? If so, how do I check whether I have any in my linux install's? (easily done with windows, just downloaded adaware, which threw them up straight away), but how to check a linux install ?

regards

John

There are a lot fewer trojans and viruses so I wouldn't worry to much about the linux side. For removig such things from windows I use spybot:
http://www.safer-networking.org/

One good thing about Linux, well there is actually a lot so I'll just mention this one. When you get a spam message goto 'Message' then 'Bounce'. It will send the e-mail back as a bad address and they will usually remove the e-mail address. I did that recently with two that I got and haven't seen another one yet. Thanks Yahoo! So much for keeping it private huh???

That don't always work but worth a try.

Later

Thanks for the suggestions

I've downloaded and installed the spybot thing for windows, but I'm still confused about whether a cookie could/would extract anything? i.e. is it possible that a piece of spyware could be inserted with a cookie and not need root priviledges to install?

I've e-mailed the webmail provider to alert them, and see if there's anything that I can get them to do, but that will be a wait and see thing.

regards

John

cookies can only contain text so I wouldn't expect them to contain viruses.

But if cookies are supposed to only contain text, can they also contain code and/or a script that will "harvest" e-mail addresses from a browser, as it's only a problem with one of my web based e-mail providers?

regards

John

They can only grab information that you submit - in windows this can be done automatically by executing arbitary code.

Are you doing this in Yahoo Mail? If so, are you using the free account?

Nope. I do that in Kmail. Yahoo is the one that gave out my e-mail address even though I checked the box for them not to. That's why I got the spam. I know this because very very few others have the e-mail address. This happened a couple of days after I signed up for a free account with them. Coincidence, I don't think so.

That's what I meant though. Sorry about the confusion.

How do you close a yahoo account anyway?

Later

https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user

And that's weird. I never got any spam after I signed up. I let the account sit for a few weeks, just to test it out.

Oh they didn't send the spam to the new Yahoo account they sent it to my private one. The only ones that have it is my ISP, my brother, this forum and a couple other forums and that is it. Me very picky about who gets this one. The forums have had it for several months and I doubt they share it.

That only leaves Yahoo. Maybe it was a fluke but I doubt it.

Later



Still no sound. Mandrake 9.2 don't like my drivers.

Just a quick update,

I changed the password for the account and the amount of "non-receipt" messages is reducing.

I understand what david_ross means about the "cookies" thing, and am presuming that under windows, it would be possible to write a cookie that picks up certain info, whether it was connected with the "data mining" stuff - though I suppose that that is what cookies are about anyway - but I also suspect that I'll just stop using the account, and sign up somewhere else.

Thanks for the assistance.

regards

John

p.s. and if yahoo have a "bounce" facility then I will have to have a look at their webmail.