B.com E-mail?

[OperaTenor]

Is B.com e-mail down? I'm unable to login to it.

[OperaTenor]

Never mind. It's working fine now.

Back to the classics.

[OperaTenor]

My e-mail has been incredibly slow this morning. It takes ~10 minutes for a sent e-mail to register in my "Sent" box. I have no idea for sure, but it also seems to take a long time for me to receive incoming mail. Am I alone in this?

[barfle]

I'm not sure what the whole story might be, but I forwarded a message to work on Wednesday night, and it showed up on Thursday at 6PM. That seems like excessive latency to me.

A couple of other messages made it just fine, though.

"To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer."

[Nicole Marie]

The SoBig virus is slowing down the entire internet. If you have not heard yet, this virus is an email based virus and floods servers with emails containing large attachements. Don't open the attachments, just delete the email when you get it. CNN reported yesterday that officials have said we have not seen the worst of it. The virus has not peeked and will around the beginning of next week. The only thing you can do is keep your accounts clean of these emails. Just delete them and soon this should stop, most think around Thursday of next week. Welcome to the technology age!

[Shapley]

Hey, that's progress.

Twenty years ago you couldn't wreak global discord without a full-scale army

[Nicole Marie]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/22/sobig.virus/index.html

Here's the latest news report about the virus.

[barfle]

Thanks for the update, YRH. It makes me glad that I didn't go into IT full time.

[Nicole Marie]

Per Shively's Dept:

In an attempt to react to the present worm causing problems with the Beethoven.com email system and making it run extremely slowly, I have
added a notice to the login page that explains the situation and links to more info on the worm at Symantec's website (make of Norton
AntiVirus). I also added a rule to the email system which should automatically delete any email with the following words in the subject
(taken from the Symantec website):

Re: Details
Re: Approved
Re: Re: My details
Re: Thank you!
Re: That movie
Re: Wicked screensaver
Re: Your application
Thank you!
Your details

The worm is set to end on September 10, at which time we can remove this rule. I decided that protecting our system and users was more
important that any potential lost email with the subjects above that were not actually the worm. Hopefully, this will help the situation,
but it might certainly protect a few more people from getting it.

Kevin


I hope this helps keep our system running a bit better for you.
-Nicole

[OperaTenor]

Is that what's causing the e-mail to run soooooo slowly? I'll send a message, or post one to "Draft", and it will take 30 minutes for it to show up in the "Sent" or "Draft" boxes. I'm also finding if I spend a lot of time composing an e-mail, the e-mail system will log me off with no warning! I have worked on a message for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and had it do that! When it does it, I lose everything I wrote irretrieveably, which is extremely frustrating. In a couple of cases, I've resorted to writning the message in Word, then copying and pasting into b.com e-mail. Shouldn't have to do that, should I?

I am presently waiting for 30 minutes for a draft to show up that I saved so I wouldn't lose it, but still hasn't appeared in my draft box.

Incidentally, I have Windows 98se, so I'm immune from SoBig myself.

[lliam]

Symantec Security Response has received reports of W32.Sobig.A@mm downloading and installing the Backdoor Trojan, Backdoor.Lala.

Also Known As: W32/Sobig [McAfee], WORM_SOBIG.A [Trend], W32/Sobig-A [Sophos], I-Worm.Sobig [KAV], Win32.Sobig [CA]

Type: Worm
Infection Length: 65,536 bytes



Systems Affected: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me.

Systems Not Affected: Macintosh, OS/2, UNIX, Linux

[dkm32]

Originally posted by operatenor:
I have worked on a message for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour !

Incidentally, I have Windows 98se, so I'm immune from SoBig myself.

OT: If you used more that just your two index fingers to type, it wouldn't take quite so long.

You may be immune to SoBig on your immediate machine. However, SoBig can infect LOTS of thing between you and Beethoven's mail. Sometime, I'll send you a program that shows all the jumps twixt you and another website. It can really be astounding. SoBig is but one of many evils lurking, waiting to getcha. If you use ANY Windows OS, you can be gotten. Get a good virus checker and a firewall.

From today's SD Union, Eric Raymond: The first and most effective measure you can take to secure your computers is to immediately remove all your Microsoft products and never install them again.

Now, this guy is author of The Art of Unix Programming so he might be a bit biased, but there is a lot of truth in what he says.

<small>[ 09-01-2003, 04:58 PM: Message edited by: dkm32 ]</small>

[Serenity]

I also worked a little too long on an e-mail reply this weekend and got an "Error: Page Expired" message when I hit "Send". Everything I had typed was gone and all I could hear (in my head) was that voice from Mission Impossible saying this message would self- destruct in 10 seconds.

[OperaTenor]

Hi Donna, it's not virus checking and firewalling I'm having trouble with (I have Norton SystemWorks, the best, IMO. It's killed every virus I've opened, which I did just to see how it responded. Verrrry impressive!). B.com e-mail is operating in super slow mode, which Kevin acknowledges, but whenever I spend any amount of time composing a message, it times out with no warning when I click to either save it to draft or send it, and the message is irretrieveably lost. When I'm trying to send something important and I put a lot of thought into it, it makes me mad enough to want to go back to my Juno e-mail! I don't believe I should have to create a Word document and copy & paste to send a message. It times out so abruptly and harshly I'm flabbergasted every time!

[barfle]

IMNSHO, the best way to keep from having the mail server time you out is to use your email client program, like Outlook, instead. About two years ago, beethoven radio made an announcement that the web mail wouldn't be available for some time, and published instructions for setting up several email clients so they would work just like the one from your ISP does.

I followed those instructions, and it works like a charm. I can take weeks to finish a thought (sometimes they take that long, these days), and once I'm done, click "send and receive" and away it goes.

I'm sure there's a slow-down problem with the viruses running around, but maybe in a week things will change for the better.

[Serenity]

...but I don't want to funnel my private e-mail through my work Outlook. Heaven forbid I pass a virus through!

[barfle]

Well, I MEANT your home email system, which I inferred was what you were using when you said you had spent a lot of time on an email. You wouldn't do that at work, would you?

Fortunately, (or not) my work PC won't access my beethoven mail account directly because the firewall won't go to the "named port" (that number in the URL), so I either have to go through mail2web (which doesn't let me review the spam to see if the filter is too tough) or do it strictly from home.

[dkm32]

I agree with using MS Outlook (POP3) to read my mail on Beethoven. I also use Outlkook Express to clear out the SPAM folder. Works much better than going through IE for all that stuff.

If you are at work, you can set up filters so that you Beethoven mail goes to a folder Other than a company Folder. I would assume that whatever virus checking you have for Company mail would also clean virus from any Beethoven Mail.

[Thalberg]

Would some knowledgeable soul kindly re-post those instructions barfle mentioned? I'd like to jump on the POP3 bandwagon, but I have no idea how. Thanks!

[Serenity]

Hey Barfle, how did you figure out what your work PC won't do?