Plain English Technical Advice

FAX-by-Email

2010-03-13T13:05:24+00:00

Although FAX is an old technology, it refuses to die and there is still a significant demand for sending and receiving documents in this way.

The problem with FAX machines is that they need to be situated close to a phone line and the less-sophisticated models (without memory) do use up a lot of paper.

You can, of course, send and receive FAX directly from your computer and all recent releases of Windows (but not all versions) have the relevant software facilities included―in fact, Microsoft started phasing-out FAX with Windows 98 but it was restored with the release of Windows-XP.

Most computers now come with wireless and/or network cable connections to access the internet, which replaces the dial-up modem required for direct FAX transmission―if really necessary, you can always buy a dial-up modem which plugs into a USB port.

A more-practical solution, in my opinion, is a FAX-by-email service which doesn't require a phone line.

There are a number of FAX-by-email services which work along the same lines:

Receiving FAX

Each user is provided with a unique telephone number; the FAX is actually received by the service provider's computer and then forwarded to the user as an email attachment―hence, there is no requirement to tie-up a telephone line and the FAX can be received at any location.

In many cases 'non-geographic' (0871, 0844, etc) numbers are provided at no charge and the service-provider benefits from a share of the extra revenue generated from these 'premium' services.

In most cases, there is a requirement to use the free number from time to time (typically 3-monthly) in order to maintain the service.

If there is a requirement to receive FAX from abroad, it is better to pay for a 'geographic' number (for example, '0207' for London) as non-geographic numbers can't generally be accessed from outside of the UK.

To minimise cost to the sender, some service providers can supply FAX numbers local to major cities around the world.

Sending FAX

The usual model here is that you send your FAX as an email attachment and it is re-transmitted to the recipient's FAX number.

Charges are typically on a 'per-page' basis.

Example

I have just signed-up to a service provided by www.faxtastic.co.uk

Faxtastic can provide a non-geographic (0871) number free of charge―this works for FAXes sent in the UK and needs to be maintained by receiving at least one FAX every 90 days.

The sender is charged 10p per minute for calls to this number.

An annual payment of £10 will remove the usage requirement.

For £30 annually, Faxtastic will provide an 0844 number with no usage requirement and 'local call' rates for the sender.

If there is a requirement to receive FAXes from abroad, a 'geographic' number (0207, etc) can be provided for £30 p.a. and the sender will be charged at normal call rates.

If all cases, you can choose to receive the FAX attachments in PDF or TIFF format―to see which works best for you, you can generate a test FAX delivery from the Faxtastic web site.

Sending via Faxtastic

The FAX is sent as an email or an email attachment―for some reason, the body of the email message is discarded if there is also an attachment .

The attachment should be in either PDF (recommended as the best choice) or DOC (Microsoft Word)―note that Word 2007 (DOCX) format is not supported though Word 2007 allows you to save documents in the earlier format (DOC) or directly as a PDF.

I also found, by trial-and-error (mainly error), that graphics disappear from the Word FAX transmission so the strong message here is―stick to PDF.

If your source document comes from a scanner, these can usually be set up to save files in the required format.

Pricing is on a 'per-page' basis, depending on the number of credits you purchase in advance.

For example, I purchased 100 credits for £10 (+VAT) which works out at 10p (+ VAT) per page for FAXes sent to 'geographic' (i.e. non-premium) numbers in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Successful delivery of the FAX is notified by email as are any problems.

I had a couple of queries on FAX sending and the Faxtastic support people responded to my email within minutes―one issue they clarified is that delivery will be attempted for around 7 minutes if the recipient number is engaged or otherwise unavailable.

On the face of it, a pretty good service though there are a number of others available.

HDTV or not HDTV? That is the Question

2010-03-07T16:18:13+00:00

Firstly, I must say that providing support on digital TV is well-outside my area of technical competence.

However, I was inspired to write something on the subject when I recently received an email from Richard Buckton who runs a very useful site providing advice on all aspects of digital television.

The site is mainly about the forthcoming digital switchover and provides a simple guide to the various service options together with a number of local focus pages covering specific areas of the country in considerable detail.

Richard's email reminded me of the time that I was caught out when buying my first 'stereo' TV from a major high-street retailer.

As I soon discovered, there were no stereo broadcasts at the time and my TV was still unable to deliver stereo when these were subsequently introduced using the NICAM system.

In describing this product as a 'stereo TV', the retailer was not exactly selling under 'false pretences' though a salesman for this organisation subsequently explained 'off the record' that it was a stereo TV provided that the signal came from a stereo source (which did not happen to include the internal TV tuner).

I mention this because I now see the same confusion around television sets described as 'HD Ready' which generally need some sort of external decoder before they will reproduce a high-definition picture―though, as I understand it, there are some TV models becoming available with internal FREESAT tuners which will handle HDTV directly.

It is also my understanding (as I mentioned, I am not an expert) that existing FREEVIEW boxes and internal TV tuners will not handle the HDTV services shortly being introduced as part of the FREEVIEW service.

I hope and believe that Digital TV Advice will provide a shining beacon in this sea of darkness.

BT Broadband Speed Tester

2010-01-19T15:41:34+00:00

When it works, the BT Broadband Speed Tester provides useful information to assist with the diagnosis of erratic broadband performance.

Trouble is, in my experience, it is quite slow to get going and generates a 'test error' more often than it completes the test.

Furthermore, BT will not allow more than one test every 3 hours.

To assist with the interpretation of results, there are quite a lot of useful notes such as:

The throughput of Best Effort (BE) classes* achieved during the test is - 5:20:75 (SBE:NBE:PBE)- These figures represent the percentage ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE, and Priority BE marked traffic through the network.

Total download speed achieved during the Best Effort test is sum of these three types of Best Effort traffic that were passed through the network for your broadband connection.

Sententiously speaking, that's as 'clear as mud'.

As Winston Churchill might have said, "Never use a long word when a diminutive one will suffice".

For a quicker and more-reliable test, I use either mybroadbandspeed or the ThinkBroadband Speed Test which provide slightly less information but work pretty-well every time.

Note: You may be prompted to download the latest version of JAVA when using these tests.

Virtual Assistant―the 21st Century Secretary

2009-12-05T07:52:05+00:00

Back in the 1970s, every sizeable business had it’s typing pool which would churn-out a stream of template-based correspondence.

At a somewhat higher-level, the typical Secretary would attend meetings, take notes and generate the resulting paperwork directly.

As office-based computers automated most of the mundane tasks, the bog-standard copy typist largely disappeared and the Secretary evolved into the rather more ‘entrepreneurial’ Personal Assistant who was generally competent in handling all aspects of office administration.

The only problem was that highly-skilled PAs were difficult to find and the cost of hiring on a full-time basis put them beyond the reach of many small businesses.

Fortunately, the increasing power of the internet has given us the Virtual Assistant who can take-on most of the PA role with a few notable omissions such as making the coffee.

Virtual Assistants work primarily by phone and over the internet, using tools such as email, instant messaging and on-line diary management.

Most importantly, they can be hired by the hour.

Case Study

Amanda Wharton, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees, had around 20 years of secretarial experience when she became a victim of ‘downsizing’ just over a year ago.

As this was her second experience of redundancy, Amanda decided to set up her own business which offers secretarial and administrative services on a ‘virtual’ basis.

As luck would have it, demand for these services has been quite good so she has now organised a group of friends and former colleagues who are also available to work on a virtual basis for one reason and another.

Although Amanda’s company will happily take-on basic typing and data entry jobs, most clients tend to use them for rather more-challenging assignments:

Diary Management: Using the collaborative features of Microsoft Outlook, Amanda organises diaries and meetings for several Company Directors.

Sales Analysis: Working directly with sales figures submitted by email, Amanda collates these to produce a monthly sales analysis presented as an Excel spreadsheet.

Correspondence and Reports: As most managers now tend to generate their own letters, emails and reports, Amanda finds herself performing more of a ‘Quality Assurance’ function to ensure that outgoing correspondence is coherent, presentable and grammatically correct.

She also performs a traditional ‘secretarial’ role in dealing with incoming mail.

Basic Bookkeeping: Although Amanda is currently studying for an (AAT) accountancy qualification, this service is really aimed at the small business where there is not enough work to support a full-time book-keeper and not enough money to pay accountants’ fees for the basic functions of ledger posting, PAYE and VAT returns.

The company’s bookkeeping services are currently based on Sage accounting software but spreadsheet-based accounts can be set up for businesses with simpler requirements.

Staff Training: Inevitably, the virtual model doesn’t meet every client requirement and Amanda occasionally finds herself ‘on site’ for the purpose of setting-up basic office systems and training local staff in the use of software such as MS-Office.

Providing a virtual service does require some adjustment of traditional working practices which is why Amanda recently found herself on a beach, in Fuerteventura, dealing with email correspondence in her bikini.

In the virtual world, there is no clear distinction between work and play.

More Information: www.totallyadmin.com

Defragmentation―that's the name of the game

2009-12-02T13:16:25+00:00

All hard disks benefit from the process of ‘defragmentation’ whereby individual files are reorganised to occupy a contiguous area of the disk rather than being stored as numerous linked fragments.

Fragmentation occurs because it’s practical to write new data in the first convenient space on the disk rather than copying the whole file to a space big enough to accommodate it.

While this method makes efficient use of available disk space and is the quickest way to add file updates, the speed of access becomes slower over time as the files become more fragmented and greater effort is required to assemble the bits.

In practical terms, most Windows users will benefit from a hard-disk defragmentation every few months though this obviously depends on individual usage.

One useful feature of Windows Vista is that it is set up to carry out this process automatically though the ‘default’ setting for this seems to be at 1:00 am on a Wednesday morning when the equally-useful power-saving features of Vista are quite likely to have put the PC into ‘sleep’ mode.

Sadly, if the scheduled time is missed, there is no automated facility to catch-up.

The practical answer here is to change the scheduled defragmentation to a time when the PC is likely to be on―regular (daily or weekly) defragmentation will hardly be noticed by the user so it really doesn’t matter if some of the jobs are missed.

If the PC has become noticeably slow due to fragmentation, the process could easily take an hour or so―older and slower PCs or those with little spare disk capacity could take several hours to defragment.

Defragmenting (Windows Vista)

Click Start > Computer
Right-click on the C: drive (or any other disk) and click ‘Properties’
Select the ‘Tools’ tab
Click ‘Defragment Now’
Click the ‘Modify Schedule’ or ‘Defragment Now’button, as required―by default, all recognised disks are selected but this can be changed

The procedure for Windows XP is similar but no scheduling is available.

Partition Tragic

2009-11-19T16:24:19+00:00

During the last few days, I have seen two 'sick' Windows lap-tops whose poor performance was substantially due to lack of free space on the C: drive.

In the first case, there was about 32 Gigabytes of free space on a separate, though unused, disk partition while the second machine had about 50 Gigabytes of information created by backup software whose presence was completely unknown to the user.

The rather 'nerdish' thinking behind partitioning a single disk into separate 'logical' drives is that keeping the data separate enables you to perform a clean Windows re-installation without losing your live data.

That's all very well in theory except that both software and data are likely to be lost in the event of a hard disk failure.

The other problem is that most software is set up to save data on the C: drive, often in particular Windows folders (such as 'Documents' or 'Pictures') intended for the purpose.

Several hardware manufacturers seem to deliver new computers partitioned in this way though rarely with any clear information on why this has been done or how to go about setting-up your software to redirect the data.

Some people also seem convinced that separate partitions speed-up the computer operation though the logic of this is difficult to follow if those partitions are on the same physical disk.

Backups

Backing-up files to the same physical disk will be useless if you suffer a disk failure and somewhat difficult to retrieve if the computer won't boot-up due to the corruption of Windows.

In my opinion, you should always backup the entire system (not just the data) to a separate physical disk or other backup device.

Re-Partitioning

Until the release of Windows Vista, repartitioning a Windows system involved the use of specialist software such as 'Partition Magic'.

In Vista, just find your way via the Control Panel to Administrative Tools, Computer Management and, finally, Disk Management.

At this point, you can see a clear depiction of both the physical and logical disks (partitions).

Each partition may be deleted, expanded or shrunk so you can easily delete any surplus partitions and expand the C: partition to take-up the unoccupied space.

Do ensure that a partition is empty before deleting as any data will be lost.

Recovery Partitions

It is now fairly common for new computers to be delivered with a (relatively) small 'recovery' partition which can be used to reset the computer to it's 'delivery' state.

This is not a substitute for proper backups as all data will be lost in the recovery and it won't work at all if the hard disk has failed.

However, it's useful if you want to make a clean start or if you wish to sell the computer with all personal information removed—though some 'deeper' cleaning might be required for high-security situations.

Unwelcome Guests

2009-11-18T16:39:33+00:00

You probably know how it feels when you jump into your car to find the seat in the wrong position, the mirrors out of line and the radio tuned to some obscure foreign station—that's pretty-much what happens when you let a friend use your PC.

In the immortal words of Benny Hill "a friend in need is a bloody nuisance".

At least once a week, I hear from people who find themselves automatically logging-in to the wrong (Hotmail/Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Skype) account or are missing familiar icons or have unwanted software booting-up.

In most cases, these issues are no more than a nuisance though I often see PCs which require a 'clean' Windows installation due to corruption by malicious software—there is little point in having good Internet Security protection if the user ignores the warnings that it generates.

Fortunately, it is very easy to avoid the problem of unruly guests moving your PC 'furniture' about—all recent version of Windows allow you to open multiple user accounts which each have their own desktop, filing system, email accounts and so forth.

Each user account can be password protected and may also be given 'administrator' privileges, if required, which allows changes to other user accounts, including password changes—I suggest that you reserve 'administrator' privileges for yourself alone.

Precise instructions vary with Windows version and setup but you generally start by going to the 'Control Panel' and selecting 'User Accounts'.

Repairing a corrupt Windows system is a fairly 'hit and miss' affair while re-building from scratch, though not especially difficult, can be pretty time-consuming due to large numbers of software updates and the need to get everything set-up just as you like it.

Then there is the issue of recovering data from the corrupt system as this will inevitably be erased by a fresh Windows installation.

For a simple answer to this particular problem, see our article entitled Avoid Windows-pain with regular backups

And keep your PC setup as you like it by providing your guests with separate user accounts.

Should you upgrade to Windows 7

2009-09-16T14:46:33+01:00

On October 22^nd2009, there will doubtless be long queues at PC Stores throughout the land as punters clamour to be 'the first kid on the block' with Windows 7.

Are they stark staring bonkers?

In fact, Windows 7 has been available for some time in 'Beta' and 'Release Candidate' versions which are a sort of 'free gift' from Microsoft, given in return for helping to test the product.

Serious business users may well end-up wishing they had looked that particular gift-horse in the mouth because these versions have a limited lifespan and will need to be replaced with a 'clean' installation of the paid-for Windows 7.

To be clear, a 'clean' installation is one which wipes the entire hard-disk partition so you will need to backup and restore live data as well as re-installing all other software.

So is it worth upgrading at this time?

The first issue to consider is whether your existing PC and peripherals (printers, external disks, etc) can be upgraded to Windows 7 and the best source of advice is probably from Microsoft at Microsoft Upgrade Advisor.

Bearing in mind that software upgrades tend to make Windows more resource-hungry over time, I would be inclined to double the minimum memory (RAM) requirement of 1 gigabyte—I have recently seen a number of Windows-XP machines which are pretty-well unusable with the original minimum memory requirement of 256 megabytes.

If the relevant software drivers for printers, etc, are not available in Windows 7, there may well be a suitable download on the manufacturer's web site.

With any new version of Windows, there is always a time-lag while hardware and software suppliers produce suitable software patches though some older hardware and software may never be compatible.

Windows 7 has a 'Windows XP' mode (sadly, not included in the Home Premium edition) which theoretically enables you to run your old Windows-XP programs though we have kind-of heard that story before with both Windows XP and Vista—there is no way that I can get my accounting program (Quickbooks 2005) to work on Windows Vista though most of my other Windows-XP programs transferred OK without using the so-called 'compatibility mode'.

As with the change from Windows XP to Windows Vista, a lot of the enhanced functionality is already available through regular Windows Updates—for example, you can have the latest version of Internet Explorer (8) with Windows 7, Vista or XP.

Although Vista did include some useful additions, particularly the faster 'search' facility, quite a lot of the change was 'cosmetic' and just made life temporarily more difficult for experienced Windows users.

The Microsoft Windows 7 Tour mainly describes facilities already available in Vista or cosmetic stuff such as different ways to change your desktop wallpaper and Windows sounds—not issues of excessive concern to serious business users.

Further research reveals that some features (notably, Windows Mail. Movie Maker and Photo Gallery), have been dropped from Windows 7 so you would need to make other arrangements if using any of these.

If has been reported that Windows 7 is an 'incremental upgrade' with rather less in the way of new features than was the case with the introduction of Vista—that seems to be a fair assessment of the situation.

For support purposes, I have a Windows XP (Professional edition) system which works perfectly well and I would still be happy to use it as my main business computer.

Now that I am used to it, I am very happy with Vista (Ultimate edition) which I have installed on both desktop and lap-top—though I let the system 'mature' for about 18 months before I committed to Vista on my main business computer.

My Opinion—should you choose to accept it

Unless you have a pressing need for some new facility in Windows 7, I don't think that it is worth the inevitable hassle of upgrading an existing Windows XP or Vista system.

If you are buying a new computer with new applications software, it makes sense to go for the latest operating system though I would be inclined to put-off the purchase for a few months unless you really fancy being part of the Microsoft testing programme.

Adding contacts to Outlook and Outlook Express

2009-09-08T12:35:04+01:00

The easiest way to add an email address to your contacts list is to 'harvest' the address from an incoming email.

In Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail (rebranded OE for Windows Vista), the method for doing this is identical:

Open the email message
Place cursor on the appropriate entry (email address or name) in the 'from', 'to' or 'cc' section and right-click
Click 'Add to....' to complete the process (Outlook Express has 'Add to Address book', Windows Mail has 'Add to contacts', 'Outlook has 'Add to Outlook contacts')
Repeat for each contact that you wish to add

In Outlook Express and Windows Mail (but not Outlook), you can set the options to automatically save any new contacts when you reply to a message:

In Outlook Express, Tools/Options/Send - tick "automatically put people I reply to in my address book".

In Windows Mail, Tool/Options/Send - tick "automatically put people I reply to in my contacts list".

Note that if you use the 'Reply All' option when responding to a message, you will get the entire recipient list in your address book.

I mention this because I regularly get newsletters, etc, which come with an unsolicited 'gift' of the sender's entire mailing list due to the simple error of using the 'Cc' box rather than 'Bcc' which hides the recipient addresses.

Reading and creating PDF files

2009-08-17T16:37:48+01:00

Today, one of my clients received an 'invitation' to download PDF9 which, as he put it, "appears to be a super version of Adobe".

My first reaction was that one should always be wary of downloading software unless it is known to be from a very reliable source.

"What are PDF files?"—I hear you ask

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format originally created by Adobe Systems to provide documents which could be read on any computer using any operating system.

To read a PDF file, all you need is the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader which may be downloaded from the Adobe web site here Get Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Unless you wish to create PDF documents, you don't need anything else.

Creating PDF Documents

When I purchased a full version of Adobe Acrobat for about £400 several years ago, I imagined that it was some sort of full-featured word processing or desktop publishing package.

In fact, that version basically converted existing documents created by other software in a (limited) number of formats—that's not all it did but that was the essence of it's operation.

Rather than spending a similar sum of money on a 'Vista' version, I looked at the market for other PDF creation software and purchased eXpert PDF which currently costs €69 (Euro) from Visagesoft.

This works in a different way by intercepting the ‘Print’ stream from any software application and it seems to work very well—though I only have an occasional requirement for this sort of conversion.

Both Adobe (full version) and eXpert PDF can 'work in reverse' to convert from PDF to Word and some other formats..

If you only need to convert Microsoft Office documents, I notice that the 2007 version allows you to save them directly in PDF format.

To Summarise:

You don’t need to buy any software to read PDF documents—the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader will do the trick
Microsoft Office 2007 documents can be saved directly in PDF format
To convert any format to PDF, I would recommend eXpert PDF

The current version of Adobe Acrobat (full version) is 9 though a quick Google search reveals a lot of other PDF9 products—to avoid downloading malicious software, be sure to download from the Adobe website or another known secure source.

Free Lap-Top?—I Don't Think So!!

2009-05-21T09:52:50+01:00

This morning, I received the following email from one of my contacts:

Dear All

Ericsson are distributing free laptops for their brand promotion.

They are hoping to increase their popularity and sales with this campaign.

All you need to do is send an email about this promotion to 8 people
and you will receive an Ericsson T18 laptop. However if you send an
email to 20 people or more you will receive a Ericsson R320 laptop.

Kindly ensure that you cc to xxxx@xxxx.co.uk so she will know you
have sent the email.

In accordance with the instructions, this was copied to a number of the sender's other contacts whose email addresses were there for everybody to see.

As this was a 'forwarded' email, I could also see a couple of dozen contact addresses propagated by the previous sender in the 'chain'.

Apart from any other issue, distributing large batches of email addresses in this way will inevitably increase the volume of unwanted email received by each one—I regularly receive emails which reveal the sender's entire contact list which could easily be 'harvested' for marketing purposes.

Unless there is a specific reason for disclosing the identity of one recipient to another, you should always use the 'blind copy' (Bcc) facility available with most email services.

With regard to the original offer of a free lap-top, this is about "as realistic as a British MP's expenses claim".

What's happening here is known as a ‘Denial of Service’(DOS) attack—a mischievous attempt to generate large numbers of emails which will clog-up the system generally and could well overwhelm the email servers of the named recipient (Ericsson, in this case).

Microsoft are also a regular target of this prank—for example, it is suggested that they will pay-out hard cash if you help to test the email system.

It’s also possible that passing-on this sort of stuff will come back to 'bite' you—with the growing use of automated anti-spam services, you could easily be identified as a source of unwanted email which might well result in all of your email being blocked or even the withdrawal of your internet service.

Anti-Spam getting out of hand

2009-05-14T16:36:24+01:00

Last week, I reported that Hotmail had blocked all email from Plusnet whose servers had apparently been 'blacklisted' for sending out 'spam'.

Following representations from Plusnet, this ban was lifted though Plusnet users were left unable to communicate with Hotmail users for something like 48 hours.

It may well be that some unwanted email was sent out via an individual Plusnet account but the entire user base suffered as an unintended consequence of the Hotmail anti-spam measures.

I had a similar problem several years back when I was unable to communicate with an important customer for several days because their spam-filtering service had blocked email from an entire Pipex server.

Plusnet themselves operate optional spam filtering which can either delete suspected email directly with the alternative of marking the item with [SPAM] included in the subject—I much prefer the second option because it identifies most (but not all) of the spam but still allows you to spot the occasional non-spam email.

Unfortunately, Plusnet have now introduced an initial filtering stage which deletes email based on the 'reputation' of the sender—this is exactly the kind of filtering which gave rise to Plusnet emails being blocked by Hotmail.

You don't actually get the chance to decide whether the items intercepted at this stage have been correctly identified as junk mail so the only way to prevent 'false positives' is to turn off spam filtering altogether.

Turning to my Typepad blogs, I have recently experienced some difficulty in setting up a new author and discovered, by trial and error (mainly error), that the recipient's domain name host (123-reg.co.uk) is apparently blocking administrative messages from Typepad.

A search of the 123-reg 'help' pages produced nothing about spam though there is a reference elsewhere to 'email defence' which appears to be non-configurable—i.e. you get it whether you want it or not.

According to 123-Reg, their email defence system is "one of the most comprehensive and effective email threat protection service on the market" which captures 98% of spam—as a confirmed cynic, I have to wonder exactly how they measure the 2% that escapes their notice and gets through.

It's a well--established fact that '83.75% of statistics are made up on the spot'.

In my experience, and despite multiple levels of anti-spam protection, most people still seem to get an awful lot of junk mail which, at the end of the day, is a bit of a nuisance but it generally doesn't do any harm—protection against malicious software is, of course, essential but that is a separate issue.

To read the earnest advertising of some Internet Service Providers, you would think that junk email has become one of the greatest threats to mankind, second only to 'global warming' and well-ahead of 'swine flu'.

With everybody jumping 'on the bandwagon' to blacklist everybody else, a far more-serious problem is the loss of email that you actually want.

Hotmail becomes NOTmail

2009-05-04T11:42:12+01:00

Yesterday morning, I noticed that emails to Hotmail users were being 'bounced' with the following message:

The following message to xxxxxxxx@hotmail.comwas undeliverable.

The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, we recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP), a free program intended to help senders remove unwanted recipients from their e-mail list:

As I am not in the habit of sending 'spam' email which might give rise to complaints, I found this rather offensive as well as inconvenient.

One problem with this high-handed approach is that many Internet service providers including my own (Plusnet) do not allocate each user a fixed IP (internet address) but dynamically allocate a 'free' address when the user logs on.

Consequently, any user could be penalised as a result of unwanted email generated by another.

The problem could potentially be resolved by disconnecting from the broadband service and logging-in again.

In this case, however, it is the Plusnet mail server that was 'blacklisted' rather than an individual user as suggested by the misleading 'delivery status' message above.

According to the Plusnet 'service status' page, Hotmail acknowledged this problem yesterday and have agreed to remove the blacklisting in their own sweet time which is expected to be this afternoon.

Ironically, these sort of anti-spam measures have little effect on the serious bulk-emailers who don't stick around at the same address for long enough to be bothered by any blacklisting.

In my opinion, losing emails that you actually want is a far more serious problem than receiving junk which is a bit of a nuisance but does no actual harm.

If the Post Office started witholding paper mail that they didn't think you should have, they would most likely be prosecuted, so why should it be different for email service providers.

McAfee—Is it worth the effort?

2009-04-17T15:31:37+01:00

For several years, McAfee Internet Security has done an excellent job of keeping my various computers safe though the administration associated with the product has become increasingly tedious.

In a previous article, I mentioned the wisdom of purchasing the physical CD rather than trading with McAfee online—the problem is that they grab your credit card details and automatically renew your subscription every year while providing no simple way to cancel this process.

This approach, they say, "is for your protection” even though the PC being protected may have long since departed to ‘computer heaven’.

Renewal reminders

Then there are the advertisements and ‘renewal reminders’ that pop-up from various sources—in the confusion, it is easy to renew a subscription for software which has been replaced by a newer version or may not even relate to that machine if the user has several PCs.

To be fair, I also know several people who have purchased Norton and other internet security products as a result of confusion rather than necessity—I recently saw a PC with 6 different 'conflicting' internet security products which had bought the machine to a grinding halt.

McAfee 2009 problems

A few weeks back, I purchased a 3-user version of McAfee Internet Security 2009 which I installed on my new Windows Vista desktop with no problems.

I also installed the software on my older Windows-XP machine whose previous subscription had not yet expired though I didn’t immediately notice that the subscription expiry date remained the same.

When I got round to installing this software on my Vista Laptop yesterday, part of the installation failed due to a “newer installation detected” which I presume to mean updates to the previous version—the meagre instructions which come with McAfee 2009 state that you can install without removing the previous installation though that seems to be poor advice.

I also noticed that the subscription expiry date had not been updated as the installation process appears to latch-on to the remainder of the previous subscription once you go on-line to ‘validate’ the installation.

On the Windows XP installation, I resolved the matter by going to the McAfee account and downloading the relevant software using the link on the new subscription—not entirely straightforward as the ‘firewall’ module (needed on XP) was not offered and I subsequently installed this from the CD.

The subscription expiry was updated but only to the date of my first installation on the Vista machine—so anyone who buys three computers over the course of a year will get poor value from the 3-licence product.

On the laptop, I completely uninstalled the existing software and re-installed with a view to ‘activating’ the product under a different username in order to get my full 12 months of cover—the installation process normally picks-up the fact that you have an existing account and invites you to ‘activate’ using those login details which may be changed at that stage.

On this occasion, however, the installation went smoothly with no request to activate though the expiry of the subscription was updated ‘in short measure’ as previously described—the behaviour of this software is rather inconsistent though I should perhaps have remembered to delete the relevant ‘cookie’ generated by the previous installation of McAfee 2009.

Recommendations

I still think that an ‘integrated’ internet security package such as McAfee or Norton is a better solution than a collection of free downloads whose overlapping functions may well conflict with each other
Whatever the instructions say, it is generally better to uninstall existing software before installing newer versions of the same software
To avoid argee-bargee, wait until the existing McAfee software subscription has actually expired before installing a later version—if you don’t, it seems that you will have to do some degree of re-installation in any event
Alternatively, and to get the best value from multiple-licence versions, remove all trace of the previous installation and ‘activate’ the product with a different username—not actually tested by me in this occassion but I feel sure that this will work

If you think that this is all a bit to much of an effort to achieve a simple result, nobody would blame you.

Spamkillers' Innocent Victims

2009-03-22T16:03:27+00:00

It may be a controversial view, but I think that many people get rather over-excited by the issue of spam email—rather like conventional 'junk mail' which comes through the letter box, it can be quite irritating but doesn't actually do any harm.

And, like paper junk mail, you can always throw it away.

Of course, you should have adequate protection against viruses and other malicious software but that is really a separate issue.

For several years, I have used Plusnet as my broadband supplier and have generally been pleased to recommend them to both friends and clients.

Like many ISPs, Plusnet offer a spam filtering service which provides various options—they can either delete the suspected spam directly or they will pass it on to the user with [SPAM] added to the subject line.

Because I know that automatic filtering of this kind can never be perfect, I chose the latter option and it soon became clear that (1) quite a lot of spam was not identified and (2) there were a small, but regular, number of 'false positives' which would have deleted important emails if the more aggressive filtering option had been chosen.

Last week, a Plusnet user reported that he had failed to receive a number of important emails and I was also getting an 'undelivered' message, in respect of an email sent to another Plusnet user, with the most helpful (not!!) error message 452 Too many recipients received this hour.

A little research on the internet, including the Plusnet web site, reveals that they have now introduced another level of filtering based on the 'reputation' of the sender and that reputation would appear to include the number of emails sent in the last hour.

I first came across this 'reputation' method of filtering several years ago when I suddenly found that emails to my most important client were being rejected—I was a Pipex Broadband user at the time and it turns out that the filtering organisation used by my client had detected spam email from one of the Pipex servers and had therefore blocked any email from that server..

I must say that Pipex didn't seem particularly interested in addressing the problem—even though it wasn't directly of their making, many of their clients were being blocked as a direct consequence of using Pipex.

As my client was a big company, the managers I dealt with knew nothing of this policy though the strategy of the technical people was to 'block first and ask questions afterwards—after a good deal of argee-bargee, this problem was solved by putting my email address on a 'whitelist'.

In the case of Plusnet, the only choices presently available are to use this service or turn-off any form of spam filtering.

I think that losing email is far more serious than getting a few messages about Viagra, etc, so my choice would be to turn off spam filtering altogether.

More information on the Plusnet 'reputation' filtering at IronPort Email and Web Security

For an alternative approach to dealing with junk mail, read my article on Living with Junk Mail