Stupidity as its own reward.

[reddragdiva]

"Doctor, I get viruses when I do that."
"Don't do that, then."
"But it's tooo haaard! You're just an arrogant IT geek! I WANT MY CRACK!"

Anyone still browsing with Internet Explorer or still reading their email with Outlook or Outlook Express and who does not have a corporate gun to their head deserves everything they get. 'Email virus' means Microsoft virus and nothing else. I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who try to justify their stupidity after their machine has been sodomised. Perhaps they think they're fooling themselves.

(I would be interested to know why these people start screaming abuse like junkies in danger of being cut off when you point out they've done it to themselves.)

Remember: people using Microsoft email programs are the fuckwits facilitating the spread of Sobig and flooding even those of us who do know better with attachments the size of a planet. I was greeted this morning with one hundred and twelve Sobig.F block messages. DON'T BE ONE OF THOSE FUCKWITS.

And if you browse with IE and dare whine about popups, porn links on your desktop and Start menu, massive security holes and how it takes the whole machine down with it when it crashes ... well.

Mozilla Firebird is about the finest web browser going. If you don't like that, or have less than 64MB memory, try Opera. For email, Mozilla, Netscape 7.1 (which is pretty much a nicely-packaged Mozilla 1.4 - best way to start if you're not technically confident) or Mozilla Thunderbird have the Best Spam Filtering Ever. And Opera and Eudora are also perfectly nice and not susceptible to viruses. Stop fucking yourself over.

If you get an email virus and you voluntarily use Microsoft email software, I will point and laugh at you, and encourage all others to do the same.

Any questions?

Update: Here is how to transfer your OE messages to Mozilla or Netscape, and here is how to set up the l33t spam-filtering in Netscape 7.1 or Mozilla 1.4. For Firebird or Thunderbird, all the support is on the Mozillazine Forums.

Update 2: Next week will be even worse. If your inbox has been flooded, call your ISP and tell them they need virus filtering on the mail server.

Update 3: A wonderful rant from NewsForge. "Dear Outlook users: Please remove me from your address books." And the complete explanation of the psychology of Windows defenders.

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

In addition to OE I also use a thing called Ameol, which no-one outside of Cix will ever have heard of. But anyway, here are some links to software that I consider essential -

Personal Firewall: http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
The best anti-virus: http://www.sophos.co.uk
The free anti-virus: http://www.grisoft.com
Trainable spam removal: http://popfile.sourceforge.net
POP3/SMTP email server: http://www.pscs.co.uk/
Spyware removal: http://www.lavasoft.de

And if you have broadband then a NAT router of some sort is pretty much essential even if you're only connecting one or two machines.

[sparklielizard.livejournal.com]

Yep, I use AdAware (I think that's the Lavasoft one!), I have a paid for copy of Norton Antivirus, and I have ZoneAlarm.

I know ZoneAlarm has vulnerabilities but I imagine it would detect most trojans. As for being hacked into - well, there are plenty of muppets out there (including the company I work for!) who don't know how to operate a firewall properly that would be fair game first, rather than the effort of working out I have ZoneAlarm and using an exploit.

I only have the one computer connected to the Internet through a bog standard USB modem, so I've never really bothered with routers and the like. If I started running my own website on another machine (something I have been considering) I'd sort something out though.

As for anti-spam stuff; I've built up some good enough custom filters to get rid of most of the yucky stuff - I get over 100 a day of 'em!

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Or you could dispense with all that and get a real computer, of course.