Ask Felgall

There seem to be a huge number of emails lately that claim to come from CNN advising you that you need to upgrade Flash or your PDF reader or some other commonly used program. These emails are kind enough to offer a link to where you can download their recommended upgrade from their favourite malware site.

These emails do not come from CNN. They are spam and should be deleted immediately. If you have had the misfortune to be tricked into installing one of the programs that they link to you should uninstall it immediately and run antivirus and antispyware scans of your computer to try to clean up the damage that they have done to your system.

The latest version of Flash and PDF Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe web site and should never be downloaded from anywhere else.

My advanced form2mail script contains a number of security features that allow you to select how difficult you want to make it for the spambots to submit via your form.

Why wouldn’t you always choose the most secure level offered? Well the more secure that you make forms to defend against the spambots the more likely it is that you will prevent real people using the form as well. By offering several different levels of security the form allows you to start with a lower level of security that interferes with fewer people using the form and allows you to increase the security on those forms where you actually need a higher level of security to cut down on the spam.

Securing your Forms Against Spam

Yesterday my ISP blocked my internet access for a couple of hours when their automated spam blocker somehow misidentified my connection as having been sending spam. The ISP did not of course accuse me of sending spam, their block page suggested that it would have actually been caused by a virus or spyware having got installed on my system and that this was the most likely source of the spam. Their block page also offered free antivirus and antispyware software for download so that you could use the time you were blocked in scanning your system to find and remove the problem.

I didn’t need their download links because I already have a full range of security software installed on all my computers and the antivirus software had already brought itself completely up to date before the block started.

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