1st March 2005 - Microxchange March News Wire

News Wire from Microxchange – Bi-Monthly

March 1st 2005


Please do not reply to this email as it does not go to a mailbox that is monitored. We hope that you find some of the information in this newsletter useful. Should you wish to unsubscribe please use the link at the bottom


So what is ‘Spam Salad’:

The term used to describe the garbage that you sometimes get at the bottom of emails which tries to confuse email anti spam software.


Environmental Issues:

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEED)
There is a new law coming into force in August 2005 which requires that companies carry out proper disposal of defunct IT equipment. A free guide is available for download from http://www.microxchange.co.uk/weeegd.pdf


Rogue Dialer Scams;

Users who dial up to the internet on a phone line should be on guard against rogue dialler programs.
There are an increasing number of cases where net users have been conned by such scams.
In one case a woman from the Midlands racked up a bill for £320 on top of her usual £14.99 a month after being tricked into downloading software onto her computers.
She had been closing pop-ups while accessing the web and found instead she had been connected to a premium rate number. A company in Spain was found to be behind the con.

Keeping a Clear Inbox-Personal Spam filters

For those of you that do not have the luxury of having a corporate spam filter in place, you may be interested in taking a look at these website, which offer anti-spam software for single users;

www.ospam.com
www.spamihilator.com
www.surfsecret.com
www.spampal.com


Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

If you ever download the Microsoft updates for your operating system, you may or may not have noticed that Microsoft now releases a ‘malicious software removal tool’, which is updated monthly.

‘After the download, this tool runs once to check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and automatically helps remove any variants found. After it runs, the tool is deleted from your computer. A new version of the tool will be offered every month. If you want to manually run the tool on your computer, you can download a copy from the Microsoft Download Center or run an online version from microsoft.com. In addition to using this tool, you should use an up-to-date antivirus product to help protect your computer from other malicious software.’
More info is available at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=890830



OnSpeed – www.onspeed.com

This outfit accelerates the speed of plain old dial-up internet connections. OnSpeed has more than 200,000 users in the UK and uses compression technology to speed up net access. So, if you are either out on the road a lot (and have to use a standard dial up connection to connect to the internet) or are in an area where you cannot get ADSL, it maybe worth a look at.


Skype – www.skype.com

Voice over IP is taking off in a big way and becoming a major threat to the telecoms providers. You can download the software to your PC and start phoning around the world for free!
With 13m users worldwide and numbers growing by 80,000 a day, Skype could have between 140-245m subscribers by 2008.


Answers – www.answers.com

Now, this is an interesting bit of software, which is worth a look see. Discover the power of 1-Click Answers. Free add-on software brings you instant information about any word on your screen, whether you're working in Word, reading your e-mail, or browsing the web.