Watch out if you use AOL

I clicked on the link and went to an "American Greetings" web site. A screen popped up asking me to enter my screen name and password to open the greeting card. I did and then got a blank screen. So, brianiac me, I did it a couple more times then said the hail with it.

Next day, someose used my e-mail address to send out spam. The AOL people caught it and locked up my account. The next time I tried to log on I had to enter info about the last few numbers on my credit card (the one I opened the AOL account with), and had to set up a new password.

Just wanted to post this in case the same thing happens to you. The person who sent me the greeting card e-mail was hacked, too. They used his account to send out the e-mails to obtain more passwords.

I'm going to call AOL and see if I can get the web site that was doing the spamming to get shut down. I don't know if they did the spamming or not, but they sure seem guilty to me.

The Bri Guy

Tom A

Having worked where computer security was researched I got VERY paranoid! So I use combinations of numbers and letters that only I can relate together. Like; the street number and town where I lived as a kid. Phone number and person's name where I do something like put the last name first then the number and then the first name. Such combinations are endless, when you add things like birthdays zipcodes etc. to the mix. I also helps if you can use non-alphanumeric characters like ';:",/? etc. With these you need to be more careful with using since some have special meanings to some software, but some times they can be used. Also the LONGER the passwork the better - hence the combos I cited above. Most systems will accept very long passwords - except UNIX - stupid system to be used for security reasons, in my opinion!! It allows only 8 characters (last I knew) and EVERYONE knows the encryption scheam used on the password file. Steal it and just "brute force" it and you can get every password on that system. AND we now have computers that can do the "brute force" method in reasonable times, weeks at most!

I could go on and on!! About how Microsoft is largely the reason why you hear about government computers getting hacked into and why there is so many viruses around. But no point in it!! :-(

Regards,
Larry