"Eleanor Blair" wrote in message
...

Which ISP is this?

34sp

Do you know how they're identifying these viruses?

Nope. And if I did know I wouldn't publish details somewhere virus writers
could read them.

--
Tim Ward - posting as an individual unless otherwise clear
Brett Ward Limited - www.brettward.co.uk
Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board - www.brettward.co.uk/canb
Cambridge City Councillor

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:34:53 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

And in act my original query wasn't so much that I had recieved such,
but har recieved it with an enormous amount of personal information that
*very* few online sites actually know. Namely my certificated christian
name that I haven't used for years, no one knows of, and only is EVER
used by me on legal documents and occasionally my bank details. Its not
even printed on my credit card or cheques.

Which suggested a major leak somewhere in some pretty trusted organisation.

Hmmm... where was the original post? Seems to have crept into cam.misc
mid-thread.

--
One way ticket from Mornington Crescent to Tannhauser Gate please.

Fevric J Glandules wrote:
On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:34:53 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

And in act my original query wasn't so much that I had recieved such,
but har recieved it with an enormous amount of personal information that
*very* few online sites actually know. Namely my certificated christian
name that I haven't used for years, no one knows of, and only is EVER
used by me on legal documents and occasionally my bank details. Its not
even printed on my credit card or cheques.

Which suggested a major leak somewhere in some pretty trusted organisation.

Hmmm... where was the original post? Seems to have crept into cam.misc
mid-thread.

Oh, it's about a month or two old. For some reason some prat reopened
it. Cork-soaker IIRC.

The history is that I got sent a virus as zip file attachment,
purporting to be from Orange.

I checked it, found it was a virus, so nothing new there,.

However the disturbing part of it was how mch very restricted
information they had about me. Almost enough to convince me it might not
have been a virus.

Then thread drift happened with peole telling me I already had a virus,
and should boot from a Live CD. which is linux terminology: I run a
Mac, or reinstall windows, which isn't anymore relevant,

Then others climbed in claiming that email attachments never contained
viruses anymore, and that the real danger was web sites with active code
etc etc.

In short the usual thread drift.

Some ISP's do remove known virus laden emails. Some don't. Its a bit of
a pain if they do, if you want to send one to a virus checking site.

A more interesting drift was the relative vulnerability of the main
platforms..windows, MAC Linux etc.

Tim Ward wrote:
"Eleanor Blair" wrote in message
...
Which ISP is this?

34sp

Do you know how they're identifying these viruses?

Nope. And if I did know I wouldn't publish details somewhere virus writers
could read them.

Oh tush.

There are a zillion programs out there that can scan an email, and unzip
any zipped bits, and look for known 'signatures' that identify a certain
bit pattern as being characteristic of a known virus.


They are called 'virus checkers;' and they contain a downloaded library
of such signatures.

And applying them to a mail stream at an ISP is no different to having
them installed on your desktop. They just take a huge amount of
processing power.

Its nothing new. And nothing the virus writers dont know already.