Tim,thanks for your input mate that is interesting about quicken as i have just found a brand new sealed box of that sortware the only trouble is its dated 1996 and is on floppy disks :o)

You can get a floppy drive from Maplin for 9.99 & upwards

Thanks CCC

MB I've used quicken since 1993 for my domestic and sole trader business. I also do my own tax returns/accounts and it works for me.
PS - I'm Cornish i.e. a tight Scotsman

Anybody know how to stop emails selling viagra, which appear to originate from a friends email address and goes to everyone in her address book.?

She never sends emails to multiple addresses so it appears someone is able to access her address book and use her address to send them. Dont know if they actually originate from her computer.

Bob,

Is this not a pretty clear indication that your pal has a virus on her PC?

The gurus around here will suggest the latest medication. In the meantime I certainly suggest that she takes her PC off the internet - except when it is needed vitally.

TP

I would take a bet that she has picked up a Trojan virus.

She can do a (FREE) Full Scan or Full Sweep of her machine from such as the following:

Spybot Search & Destroy - Home Page
Trend Micro's "Housecall"

I'd try doing the first one of those above for a starter. Full instructions are given in the event of finding a virus.

Another good bit of software for getting rid of trojan's is Malwarebytes . In some cases they can be more difficult in which case asking on http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ might be a way forward.

Many thanks for info guys, much appreciated.

Just spoke to my friend and she is going to run Spybot later today.

She took pc into a computer shop and they said there was nothing wrong. Do not know any more details.

If she still has problem I will drive over and have a closer look in person.

Tks again

Does she use a web-based mail service? Many, perhaps most, people do these days. In that case the problem may simply be that her mail account has been taken over by a bot. Change the password.

Sorry for delay but only just logged on to read messages.
I have been told that messages only go out until one of them fails to connect to a server, so by making the first address in address book aaa@aaa the process is doomed to failure.

Don't know how true this is and quite happy for someone to confirm it's a fairy story :)

There is evidence that much spam may come from compromised personal PCs.

Our company mail servers use a number of techniques to filter spam. The single most effective is known as 'grey-listing'.

In simple terms, when we get a request to transfer mail to us from an unknown (not 'white-listed') domain, our servers says 'sorry, a bit busy right now to deal with you, can you try again in a few mooments' and we make a note ('grey-list') the sender.

If the sender is a properly configured mail system, it will retry, usually in about ten minutes. When they try again, we spot them on our 'grey-list' and let the mail through.

A compromised PC will never attempt a retry, neither will most Spam outfits.

This technique stops about 90% of mail reaching us.

There's a lot of crap flying around the Internet mail system.

iiwarm, that is indeed a fairy story. Some early worms might conceivably have contained what in normal situations would be considered a bug, i.e. stopping if the first email address was unrecognisable, but no self-respecting worm would do that.

'self-respecting worm' :-)

I only allow self respecting worms onto my PC

Does anybody know how long DNS propogation of a new active domain should take?

I've been quoted 72 hours, but that seems a bit steep to me.

I have had one that took about a day and another that took about 3 days.

OK, thanks Haystack. I'll twiddle my thumbs for a bit longer then. Strange that it should take so long.

Hilary
Try this. It gives you an idea of how well the propogation is going.

http://www.whatsmydns.net/

Thanks for that link, Haystack.