Larry Seltzer

Your professional spammer can send out millions of e-mail messages for a trivial amount of cash. All it takes is an unscrupulous spammer, an ISP that doesnt care, and a list of addresses. While almost everyone on the receiving end of these messages consider this a problem, theres no reason for the spammer to be […]

Some e-mail services provide spam filtering, but perhaps the better approach is a spam-filtering service that also gives you an e-mail account. For $15.99 for six months, AlienCamel gives you a spam-filtered POP3 or IMAP mail account. And we found that AlienCamels innovative, proprietary approach to spam filtering works fairly well. At the core of […]

Virus Likening the threat of computer viruses to bank robbers in the Old West, Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on Monday called for a redoubling of innovation to keep the spread of malicious computer code at bay. “In the Old West, the banks didnt shut down because of the bank robbers,” he told a […]

During the run-up to Blaster, in the period when we all expected an exploit to strike any minute, I was visiting friends. They had one computer, a Windows XP Home box, with only an AOL dial-up line. One night I went online to check the latest sports scores, my curiosity got the better of me— […]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Windows 9x was an innovative operating system and a productive choice for users. For many years now, its been clear that its not only third-rate architecturally, but also irreparable. The solution to the Win9x problem has always been to get users onto the NT kernel, […]

Are you still getting SoBig.F messages? I know I am. In the past 24 hours, Ive received 213 of them, 2,830 since August 26. One might wonder how such nonsense can go on. When you get right down to it, there are two base requirements for a SoBig.F infection to fester: an unprotected system and […]

There are many measures of a spam-blocking product, but probably the most important one is the number of false positives it generates. False positives are non-spam e-mails that the product mistakenly classifies as spam. They represent the most important failure of a product because the more of them there are, the less you can trust […]

As I work on a couple of upcoming reviews of anti-spam products for PC Magazine Ive been struggling to define my own standards for anti-spam products. In my previous reviews of such products Ive always stated not only that the number of false positives was the most important measure of the product, but that the […]

Everyone agrees, even me, that education is crucial to make our computer systems more secure. But recent experiences dont paint an optimistic picture. Either were not educating people or education is not working: Too many users still fail to take simple precautions to protect themselves, and many engage in dangerous practices that perpetuate attacks. The […]

When it rains it pours. Just as IT managers and other security response personnel seemed to turn the corner on the Blaster worm (a k a LoveSAN), the issue became moot for many of us here in the Northeast as our computers shut down for lack of power. Many are still juiceless days later. But […]