Hotmail Danger Alert !

Oki...coming back to the main topic...about Hotmail's flaw.
Spanner, or anyone who uses it.....could you please answer my question
in post # 11 ?

Thank You.

The reason why I ask is...maybe if you had the options to "go back to original folder" instead of "...next message", maybe some people just don't look at it
and configure their mail-options.
I am sure that someone just don't bother doing so.........

Or, even IF configured the right way....does it do it automatically ?
Is that what you mean, Mr.P ?

 

I was informed about this flaw by a colleague yesterday who mentioned he had seen it reported here. I did not give his news the attentiom i now realise we should have as you do hear about numerous things almost weekly and they mostly turn out to be not as serious as fist thought. But we ourselves spent quite some time on a significant number of machines both in our company and of clients testing and resting this flaw as it was described. We can catorgorically confirm that this does happen and is indeed a very major problem indeed. I am convinced this is how a large amount of intrusions could have occurred over the years which has been the cause of much head scratching on our part and of our clients and a large amount of wasted man hours chasing our tales to no avail.
We are so grateful to learn of this discovery as indeed i imagine so will the millions of people all around the world be as the gentleman says. The only exception being as far as we can see are a handful of individuals on your very own forum who appear to be members of yours. Instead of congratulating the author of this very important news they proceeded to spend some time attacking his chioce of a very few words written in a sort of shorthand. We had no problem whatsoever reading and digesting the valuable information as presented to us by the author, and indeed other informative articles written by the person. In fact it was a welcome change from the usual reports we see on a daily basis. We are stunned as to how this was allowed to happen and also continue. This person deserves at the very least a medal but more than that the gratitude of every internet explorer user in the world.
We would like to take this oppourtunity to express our deepest thanks to you for alerting us to this serious problem and hope more people recognise and appreciate your integrity. We have delivered this reply at the first available oppourtunity in the hope as many people as possible do indeed both read it and act accordingly. In fact i am writing this on one of our clients old computers as i speak which we are also testing, and it appears to be unperturbed by the choice of os.

 

Dear Guest,

As I stated in Post #2 I figured that problem out many moons ago. As a computer challenged person I just assumed it was a normal occurance. I also assumed that all of the Geeks and near Geeks would have known about it! I just changed the way I read and deleted my mail. No big deal.

Medals and eternal gratitude are on their way!

Play on big ed

 

Are Mike Stone and Spanner one and the same person?

 

Who knows! Who cares! If this is such a huge problem maybe someone should tell the Hotmail people. Duh!

Play on, big ed

 

Are Mike stone, Spanner and big ed one and the same person.....

or shud i say r spanner Mik Stone and big ed 1 n the the Same person if u 2 c wot 4 i am Saying?

 

Big Ed's definitely not the same person as Spanner or the corporate guest here. I won't say much more than that - except the only thing that surprises me here is that people are surprised that Hotmail goes to the next email when the one being read is deleted. It did the same thing back in 96 when I first got a Hotmail account.

BTW Mike Stone; what company are you working for? I'd like to take a look at your website.

 

Thanks Detox,

I certainly was not intending to get into a flaming contest w/anyone. Having a go around w/an unknown poster is pointless and unproductive. Most of the time I don't know what the h... I'm talking about anyways.

Play on, big ed

 

I assumed everone that uses hotmail noticed this as well; I cope with it by going back to the in box.

I use hotmail as a secondary address - also a way to email myself.

Regards - Charles

 

Hello Spanner intheWorks,

Have you contacted the Hotmail security team http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/contact.mspx about this issue?

I think this behavior should have an option to be changed just on general principle, quite aside from any potential security issue.

MSN by default will do this as well, but there is an option to change it.

Regards - Charles

 

Yes, my IE options are secure, thank you.

Regards - Charles

 

Hmmm. Interesting thread.

I've been using Hotmail for several years now, as well as Yahoo, which seems to attract far less spam in my experience (or, at least, repel far more of it). Both of these HTML email services operate in this way by default -- when you delete an email, the next one in your inbox opens.

I've never seen this as a security problem as I always read the inbox contents (new mails) and delete any that are spam or junk before opening the first one.

Although there are a few types of computer infection that can be "caught" by merely opening an email, these are quite rare, and are filtered out by Hotmail's and Yahoo's inbuilt antivirus software -- basically, you never see infected emails, or, if you do open one containing malicious code, the email system will alert you and block it as a matter of course.

The vast majority of computer infections happen by people clicking on attachments in emails, and thus require the email to trick the user into activating them; I think we would all remember those supposed Anna Kournikova pictures that hid an executable file.

So, basically, there is virtually no threat to your machine from merely opening an email -- you actually need to interact with its malicious attachments to do any damage.

As long as you have an up-to-date antivirus programme, a fully patched Windows installation (from regular or automatic visits to the Microsoft Windows Update page) and a firewall active, and don't leave any mystery emails in your inbox to be opened, then you should be able to enjoy many worry-free hours on the internet.

 

Guest oh no, post removed, TOS violation.



snowbound

 

Hotmail lately has just been full of spam To the point I almost can't even use it for my junk mail program.

bigc