Posts tagged E mail at Switched

Posts with tag e-mail

Yahoo! Now Offering YMail.com and RocketMail.com Addresses

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 19th 2008 at 1:04PM

Yahoo! Mail has been around a long time. As a consequence, getting yourself an e-mail address that isn't a non-sequitur followed by 17 digits (we hear that H0r53D1aper374689@Yahoo.com is still available!) is darn near impossible.

So to better serve its customers, Yahoo! is opening up two new domains for registering e-mails: @YMail.com and @RocketMail.com. Rocket Mail was actually snapped up by Yahoo! back in 1997 as the basis for Yahoo!'s free e-mail offering, but registration of new Rocket Mail addresses has been closed ever since.

You probably still wont be able to get JoeSmith@RocketMail.com or YMail.com, but you just might be able to squeeze a Smith in there somewhere. [Source: USA Today]

Your Company Is Probably Reading Your E-Mail, Survey Says

by Tim Stevens, posted May 23rd 2008 at 2:31PM

Think Your Company Reads your Mail? You're Probably Right.

Ever absent-mindedly type off a quick e-mail to a friend or family member using your work e-mail account and then wonder whether some lackey in a closet somewhere gave it a quick read before passing it on to its intended destination? If you work for a large corporation, there's a good chance you have reason to worry. According to a recent study by Forrester Consulting, 41-percent of companies with 20,000 employees or more have people on staff responsible for reading and checking e-mails.

The reasoning of course isn't to prevent you from using company e-mail to discuss what's for dinner with your husband or wife (we hope, at lest), but companies are increasingly fearful of the disclosure of confidential information and are using these digital censors in an attempt to stop it. Blogs, YouTube, and social networks are also getting attention, so if you wonder what they think of your e-mail, maybe you should be more worried about your MySpace page. All the more reason to do your personal surfing at home. [Source: Help Net Security via ars technica]

FBI Warns of Chinese Earthquake E-Mail Scam

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 22nd 2008 at 11:35AM

Anytime something terrible happens in the world, there is always some jerk looking to make a buck off of other people's sympathy and good will.

So keep alert, as you're bound to get at least a few e-mails soliciting donations to aide victims of the recent earthquake in China that has claimed the lives of 50,000 and climbing. The FBI on Wednesday offered the following list of tips to avoid getting scammed, many of which we've covered before, but it never hurts to review:

Do not respond to unsolicited (spam) e-mail.
Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as officials soliciting via e-mail for donations.
Do not click on links contained within an unsolicited e-mail.
Be cautious of e-mail claiming to contain pictures in attached files, as the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.
To ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes, make contributions directly to recognized organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf.
Validate the legitimacy of the organization by directly accessing the recognized charity or aid organization's website rather than following an alleged link to the site.
Attempt to verify the legitimacy of the nonprofit status of the organization by using various Internet-based resources, which also may assist in confirming the actual existence of the organization.
Do not provide personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions: providing such information may compromise your identity and expose you to identity theft.

And remember, most of the above tips are applicable to pretty much any e-mail scam, so hold on to them! [Source: NBC News]

Survey Says One-Fifth of Americans Have Never Used E-mail

by Will Safer, posted May 19th 2008 at 3:24PM

Do you know anyone who isn't spending time online, sending e-mail, reading blogs and reviews or just shopping for the best deal? Apparently, plenty of people are still not using the Internet, whether for communication or anything else, according to a new survey issued by Parks Associates.

According to the analyst firm, one-fifth of U.S. households have never used e-mail and 18 percent have no Internet access at all. That's 20 million households that are somehow able to get by without Internet access, a number that reveals a very real digital divide.

According to Parks' research director John Barrett, "Nearly one out of three household heads has never used a computer to create a document."

Does this surprise you?

Barrett points out that those who are not using computers or going online won't likely be doing either anytime soon. The survey found that only seven percent of the 20 million "unconnected" homes plan to subscribe to an Internet service within the next 12 months. Age and economic status do play a small role, but more important is the overall attitude of those who are not connected that these tools would offer no significant benefit to their lives on a daily basis. [Source: News.com]

What Happens When You Scam Back the E-Mail Scammers

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 5th 2008 at 5:06PM

We're sure you've seen them in your e-mail inbox before, those messages from someone in Africa offering you millions of dollars in questionably legal funds in exchange for your assistance and -- naturally -- a few thousand dollars of your own funds. They call them 419 scams, for the article in the Nigerian criminal code that covers this particular brand of fraud.

There is very little that one can do to find and stop these fraudsters, but what you can do is waste their time. This is called scam baiting, and it involves replying to the scammers without ever giving them what they want. The idea is the more time they're talking to you, the less time they're talking to other people who might fall for the scam. It's also kind of a hoot when you see the lengths to which some spammer scammers will go to maintain their fraudster identities.

The folks at Cracked, who often entertain us, have posted the e-mail exchanges between John Cheese of Juvenile Humor and one such scammer who called himself/herself Stella Tricia Colling. We won't ruin the surprises, but rest assured this e-huckster was quite confused and derailed after getting some "real" responses to his/her initial spam e-mail. [Source: Cracked]

5 Million E-Mail Messages -- How the White House Lost Them...

by Will Safer, posted May 3rd 2008 at 12:21PM

We've all lived through this type of scenario: You're looking for an old e-mail message, maybe one you sent a few years ago, maybe one from an old account or that you sent from an old computer. Despite all your good efforts you can't find the message. It was important but now it is lost.

Imagine losing five million messages. Important messages. Messages you're supposed to keep copies of according to the law.

That's the very real scenario the White House is faced with today, the result of the Bush administration implementing a seemingly haphazard copying and archiving system for all messages sent by executive branch employees between March 2003 and October 2005 -- and this incomplete system is apparently still in place, according to a fascinating explanation on Ars Technica.

When the Bush administration came into power in 2001, it changed the e-mail system from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, effectively disabling the automatic e-mail archiving process that the Clinton administration had put into place. Instead, the new system relied on manual saving, file naming and archiving of all e-mail, a method that leaves plenty of opportunities for messages to be lost, deleted or even altered.

Now, in response to a lawsuit, a federal magistrate judge has ordered the White House to find all the missing email.

We feel sorry for the poor IT guys who now have to search for all those messages.

If it were up to you, how would you go about finding and preserving all the old White House e-mail? [Source: Ars Technica, via Machinist]

Most Doctors Ignore E-Mails, Prefer Phone

by Tim Stevens, posted Apr 23rd 2008 at 11:04AM

Doctors Ignore E-Mails, Still Like Phones

The day of the house-call is long gone (unless you're one of the wealthy few who can afford such treatment). So, if you want to get your doctor's attention, you either need to show up at his or her office and sit around in the waiting room or call first and wait by the phone for a call back. It's been that way for decades, and, despite the proliferation of the Internet and e-mail, it looks like it's set to stay that way for the near future, at least according to a study that found that the vast majority of doctors refuse to respond to patients via e-mail.

Even though you can order everything from pizza to cars over the Internet these days, you can't request a prescription refill or ask a casual question of most doctors without the phone. A study last year found that only 30-percent of doctors would respond to e-mail, despite other findings that indicated patients who received e-mails were 10-percent less likely to schedule office appointments and were also 14-percent less likely to take up doctors' time on the phone.

The excuses doctors give include fears of privacy and concerns that patients will send an e-mail in an emergency situation instead of getting help immediately. But those sound like excuses to us. The real reason, it seems, is that doctors don't get money for time spent e-mailing, but that's changing, thanks to programs by insurers Cigna and Aetna, which will pay doctors for their time providing online support to patients.

So, while we aren't there yet, we have some hope that in the next few years, we might just be able to ask about that itch we've been suffering from without having to see the doctor face-to-face. [Source: AOL News/AP]

Internet Addicts Start "Unplugging" Once a Week

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Apr 22nd 2008 at 9:03AM

It is well established that we are a culture driven by connectivity. And its not just Americans that check E-mail on the john. or text while driving -- it turns out hat even the Italians and British are choosing TV over sex. But some out there are choosing fight back against their (our) addiction.

Sharon Sarmiento realized she had a problem when she started blogging in her dreams and hearing phantom instant messages while far from her computer. Similarly, Ariel Meadows Stallings compares her time in front of the new boob-tube to being blackout drunk: "I would sit down to check my email and it was almost like I would wake up six hours later and find I was watching videos of puppies on YouTube," Meadows told a Reuters reporter. Both women have taken to "unplugging" at least one night a week and have blogged about their battles with Internet addiction.

Unplugging once a week, one weekend a month, or even for two weeks out of the year is probably good not just for your personal relationships, but also for your mental health. It's difficult at first, and many even suffer from withdrawal symptoms such as tremors or extreme nervousness and irritation, but we can assure you that once you get past the initial pain, it's amazing how pleasurable not having to hear the ping of your instant messenger every 30 seconds can be .[Source: Reuters]

White House Says It Destroyed Millions of E-Mails

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 24th 2008 at 1:30PM

White House Destroyed Hard Drives, E-Mails

The White House is no stranger to controversy surrounding lost e-mail, but the latest bit of information might be the most shocking yet. Following a court ruling, the Bush administration must institute a recovery plan to restore what U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola fears may be large volumes of missing communications from 2003 to 2005.

In an effort to deter the court from pushing forward with the recovery plan, the White House revealed details about how it disposes of computer equipment that is to be retired. The White House revealed in January that it recycled backup tapes from 2003, taping over existing data. In other words, they're saying the millions of e-mails are gone forever.

Now, according to the Associated Press, the administration is claiming that any data on older computers is lost for good as well. When retiring older workstations White House Information Technology (IT) staff transfers some, but not all data from the old hard drive to the new PC. The old hard drive is then sent off to another government agency where it is physically destroyed.

Whether the White House is telling the truth or lying to conceal evidence of misdeeds, it seems to be up to no good. If the White House is telling the truth and the e-mails are simply lost, then the administration is not keeping proper archives and records. The data loss is at best a sign of the ineptitude of the White House IT staff, and at worst a flagrant disregard for business record retention laws.

If the White House is lying and is hiding the e-mails, or intentionally destroyed them, then that is a whole other can of worms that could put the administration and its IT staff in legal jeopardy.

From AP/AOL News (via Slashdot)

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68% of Americans Suffer from 'Disconnect Anxiety'

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 12th 2008 at 3:12PM

According to a recent study by the Solutions Research Group (Warning: PDF file), Americans just can't stand to be out of touch. According to the survey, 68 percent of Americans suffer from at least occasional disconnect anxiety when away from the computer or cell phone. The participants' feelings when away from the 'net range from general discomfort to inadequacy and panic.

Some other interesting statistics: Only 37 percent of laptop users frequently log on from their bed rooms, but 63 percent of Blackberry users admitted to using their device of choice while in the "washroom." That last number seemed particularly disturbing to our pals over at Engadget, but we'll be the first to admit that entire articles on Switched have been written from the comfort of the porcelain throne (desk?), which really just goes to show how terrified of being disconnected we are.

From Engadget

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Jilted Lover E-Mails Nude Photos, Faces Jail Time

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 28th 2008 at 12:15PM

Note to jilted lovers everywhere: those 'personal' pictures your lady or guy friend sent you are not good fodder for revenge. A man in the UK is facing jail time after forwarding nude images of his Internet lover to her entire address book.

Stephen Hailes, 48, met Karen Parker, 36, in a chat room this summer and the two began an Internet love affair. During their online tryst, Parker, a married mother of two, sent Hailes a collection of nude images. At some point he broke into her E-mail account and discovered she was flirting with other men, sending them the same photos and even meeting off line (Who would have guessed?), which they had yet to do. Apparently Hailes could deal with being the other man, but couldn't handle the prospect of other other-men.

Parker learned of Hailes' actions when friends began contacting her to ask why she had sent them naked photos. In his defense, Hailes claims he only meant to send the images to Parker's husband so he would "realise what sort of woman his wife was." Hailes says he must have clicked the wrong button, though we're unaware of a button in our E-mail clients that automatically sends to our entire address book.

So let this be a lesson: Don't start forwarding naked images of your ex-girlfriend to people if you don't like prison time. And even more importantly, don't send people you don't know nude photos of yourself.

From The Sydney Morning Herald and Fark

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Valentine's Day e-Card Could Be Virus In Waiting

by Will Safer, posted Feb 13th 2008 at 11:01AM

Storm Worm is coming this Valentine's Day.

Be wary when opening e-mail greeting cards this Valentine's Day if you don't know the sender. As Switched.com has been warning all its readers for a few weeks now, the message could turn out to be a computer virus, in this case known as a "botnet," which can take over your computer to send more viruses out, link to other computers doing the same, or even steal your personal information.

The FBI suggests not opening e-mail if you don't know the sender.

This particular e-mail baddy is known as the Storm Worm virus, and saw activity around several holidays last year. It takes advantage of people who let down their guard because an e-mail greeting card is often entertaining and seen as non-threatening.

Typically, the e-card arrives in a user's in-box, the e-mail is opened, and the user is directed to click on a link within the text to retrieve the full card. That's when the virus download occurs. The Storm Worm will be downloaded to that computer and begin its bad work, which ultimately is to deny service to a large network.

Storm Worm (so named because the subject line of the e-mail messages originally contained the line "Many Dead As Storm Batters Europe") was the most pervasive Internet attack last year.

Here are Switched.com's quick three tips to avoid Storm Worm and other viruses, trojans and malwares from being downloaded to your computer:

Don't click on a link in an e-mail message from someone you don't know.
Turn on your e-mail reader's spam prevention.
If an advertisement you find on a Web page looks suspicious, type in the company Web address yourself instead of clicking directly on the ad (Sometimes Web ads are another way viruses and trojans get distributed.)

Are you looking for a safe way to send a Valentine's Day greeting card -- or a card for any other occasion? Try Hallmark, Bluemountain, or, of course, our parent, AOL, which has a whole site dedicated to just that.

From News.com.au.

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Murder-Threat E-Mail Scam On the Rise In 2008

by Will Safer, posted Feb 11th 2008 at 3:45PM

Hitman Email Scam E-mail scam artists and spammers have relied for years on using offers that dangle quick riches in return for access to personal information and bank accounts, but now these messages may be taking a turn toward the threatening. Currently making the rounds of inboxes everywhere is a new scam e-mail that insinuates bodily harm, or even death, if the recipient doesn't fork over money.

This isn't the first time Switched.com has warned about this growing problem with scam e-mail, of course, but this new more intimidating threat seems to be growing larger. (Take a look at our "Top Five E-mail Scams" piece to learn more about how to identify fraudulent e-mail and how to protect yourself.)

As reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, this new type of scam e-mail reads, in part, that the sender is "mailing you now ... just to KILL/ASSASINATE you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that."

The e-mail continues to say that if payment is not made immediately, the sender will follow through on the threat without delay.

One of the threatening e-mails found its way to the e-mail inbox of an employee of the Post-Dispatch, who then forwarded it on to the FBI.

According to Special Agent Zachary Lowe, the scam first started appearing in 2006 and the messages are likely coming from overseas, possibly out of Eastern Europe. The first targets of the scam were white-collar workers, like doctors and lawyers, whose e-mail addresses are easy to find in ads or directories. Lowe says the threat isn't real.

As noted in the Post-Dispatch article, "This is just a new type of fraud."

The old style of scam e-mail was typically an invitation to a business opportunity or to collect lottery winnings. This new kind of scam has the same goal, just a different, and more serious, message.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

E-Mail Scam Threatens to Send Hitman After You

The Hitman Spam Scam

E-Mail, Text Messages, IMs Cost The US $650 Billion in 2006

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 27th 2007 at 12:50PM

For a society so obsessed with productivity, we're pretty bad at actually being productive. Sure, services such as Google and Wikipedia have been described as being time hogs, but apparently the real killer is multitasking.

2008 is being dubbed the "year of information overload" by Basex Inc., a research firm. The human brain is not hardwired for paying attention to several things at once or for handling constant interruptions. The pressure put on us by technology to respond immediately to E-mails, text messages, and IMs cost the US economy around $650 Billion in 2006, according to Basex.

The solution is to ignore those expectations of instant gratification, according to Johnathan Spira, the lead researcher at Basex. Resist the urge to immediately follow up on every E-mail, phone call or IM, and learn to walk that fine line between getting things done and pestering your co-workers when hitting that reply all button.

From AOL Money & Finance

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Teens Still Prefer Landline Phones, Says Study

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 20th 2007 at 5:18PM

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has been mighty busy as of late. Hot on the heels of its study that revealed that people like to Google themselves, but like to Google others even more is a fresh batch of stats about how teenagers communicate.

The survey of 12 to 17 year old boys and girls turned up some shocking information -- teens still prefer a good old-fashioned landline phone to other means of communication. 39 percent of teens said they talked to friends everyday via a landline phone. That's actually slightly more than the 35 percent who said they talked to friends on their cell phones everyday, but is almost twice the number who relied on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and good chunk more than those who used text messaging daily.

Not surprising is the lowly 14 percent who said they used e-mail daily. Past studies have already shown that young people are not fans of the oldest form of electronic communication.

One thing is for sure - they won't be using public pay phones for long, as AT&T plans to phase those out.

From USA Today

Gallery: Public Phones and Phone Booths of the World

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Yahoo! Now Offering YMail.com and RocketMail.com Addresses

Your Company Is Probably Reading Your E-Mail, Survey Says

FBI Warns of Chinese Earthquake E-Mail Scam

Survey Says One-Fifth of Americans Have Never Used E-mail

What Happens When You Scam Back the E-Mail Scammers

5 Million E-Mail Messages -- How the White House Lost Them...

Most Doctors Ignore E-Mails, Prefer Phone

Internet Addicts Start "Unplugging" Once a Week

White House Says It Destroyed Millions of E-Mails

68% of Americans Suffer from 'Disconnect Anxiety'

Jilted Lover E-Mails Nude Photos, Faces Jail Time

Valentine's Day e-Card Could Be Virus In Waiting

Murder-Threat E-Mail Scam On the Rise In 2008

E-Mail, Text Messages, IMs Cost The US $650 Billion in 2006

Teens Still Prefer Landline Phones, Says Study

Gallery: Public Phones and Phone Booths of the World

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