Re: Program that disables my anti-virus

From: Patrick Dickey (pd1ckey43_at_msn.com.removethis)
Date: 08/28/05 

Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:53:58 -0500

Stefan Kanthak wrote:
> "Patrick Dickey" <pd1ckey43@msn.com.removethis> wrote:
>
> Your email address is wrong!
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt tells you netiquette.

Thank you for the clarification on the RFC. However, I will point out
to you that the date on that paper is 1995, not 2005. 10 years ago,
they didn't have the spam problem that exists today. And there weren't
bots designed to harvest e-mail addresses from newsgroups.

So, with all due respect, I'll keep my "wrong" method, since if you want
to reply to me, you can remove the 'removethis' however, the spambot
can't. It gives me a false sense of security that any viruses I receive
due to posting in public newsgroups, were DELIBERATELY sent out, and not
just the result of a bot harvesting my e-mail address.

But, let's not start a flame war here. You have your opinion, and you
also have the RFC to back you up. I have my opinion, and if I dig deep
enough, I can find a security bulletin that suggests either NOT posting
your real e-mail address in a public newsgroup, or putting some tag such
as "No-Spam" or "RemoveThis" in to fool the bots. Which one supercedes
which? The original, which is old and doesn't take into consideration,
the bots, or the new security method, which goes against the RFC?

As for the rest of your post, yes you are correct there. I've read the
page that you referred to. But, I'll ask you this question. If
everything in that page is correct and absolute, then why is Microsoft
providing an Anti-spyware program that 'removes existing spyware'? If
the existing spyware has made the system untrustable, shouldn't MAS tell
you to reformat instead of trying to remove something that they claim
can't be guaranteed to have been removed completely? {This is purely a
rhetorical question, as I'm pretty sure about the answer.}

One thing that we can both agree on is, that the OP should not be
running in any type of administrative account. They should be running a
limited account, with the ability to "Run As...." when needed, and have
a computer administrator account set up with a password, so they can
install programs and do administrative tasks. However, a fault IHMO of
XP Home is that there is no "Administrator" account with a password, in
case you can't log in as your other accounts. {Saying this, while
realizing that Microsoft recommends renaming the Administrator account
or disabling it in XP Pro} 

-- 
Patrick Dickey <pd1ckey43@removethis.msn.com>
http://www.pats-computer-solutions.com
Smile..  someone out there cares deeply for you.