Dear List: "DELTREE C:\WINDOWS" is the most useful command for blocking a new kind of spam.
There is a new kind of spam going around which suddenly raises its ugly head in the form of pop-up windows which seem to appear out of nowhwere even if you are running only a DOS program in a dos box under Winnow$ XP. One such pop-up window spam I got hit with when running "PuTTY.EXE" in a dos box in a Winnow$ XP machine said something to the effect that the pop-up is enabled as a result of a "feature" in the operating system and it is triggered by tracking cookies which have been downloaded from various URL's that the machine had visited. The text in the pop-up window said that the pop-up windows can be quite annoying and that I could expect to receive oodles more of the darn things unless I download and install some special software advertised by the spammer. During my session I did get hit with many more of the darn things and they advertised various products and web sites and services. I know that the program I was using, being "PuTTY.EXE", which I used for logging on to my Unix shell account is not the cause of the problem. "PuTTY.EXE" can't possibly be the cause of the problem because it is open source software. The Beneficent and Enlightened Congress of Geeks would have easily found and fixed the bug if "PuTTY.EXE" were causing problems as serious as that. BTW, the machine I was using belongs to my brother. The operating system is Winnow$ XT. My brother says that he also frequently gets hit by this new kind of pop-up window spam. He uses the Earthlink ISP. He says he and his co-workers are also getting hit with this kind of spam on their machines at work. I don't know which ISP his work stations at the office are connected to. I forgot to ask him. My brother says he can't understand why this is happening because the company he works for is a very rich bank which has invested oodles of money to buy the latest and greatest computers and Winnow$ systems. They have hired only the most competent Winnow$ technician$ and $ystem$ Adminini$rator$ and they have installed the latest and greatest firewalls and they have configured them according to the most updated information they have received from the Micro$oft $eminar$ that their company pays them to attend. Questions for the group: Could the problem of this new kind of spam be fixed if they were to upgrade their operating system to an earlier version of Winnow$ having features that aren't so bad as the ones found in Winnow$ XP? Could the problem be fixed if they were to use a different ISP? Is the ISP the culprit that slips them the "tracking cookies"? Are the culprits the web-sites that they visit? They don't even know where all these pop-up window spams are coming from. I suspect they come from a some Micro$oft-owned site which Winnow$ XP automagically logs one's machine onto in the background every time one gets online with Winnow$ XP. I have heard that there is no way to fix this very disturbing feature of Winnow$ XP. Could the problem be fixed simply by setting up their browsers so as to disable cookies or to ignore JavaShit? How about just installing and running a simple program to automagically delete all cookies every few seconds or so, or even more often if needed? Of course we all know the final solution: DELTREE C:\WINDOWS The problem with implementing the final solution is that there are too many people out there who believe that such a simple and rational solution is too drastic. Perhaps they will change their minds as more and more victims get hit with this most annoying new kind of spam that only Winnow$ can provide. Sam Heywood -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser: http://browser.arachne.cz/
