Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #04862



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Richard Piotter richfile@rconnect.com
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 10:29:37 -0500
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: About that obscene mail ...


Well, I replied previously just to you, but people have got a sudden
bout of paranoia.

There are two types of mail servers in my book:

1: The annoyingly pathetic ones like Prairie.lakes uses

2: The speedy and reliable ones like rconnect uses (hehe look at my
address! :)

rconnect is fast reliable, and is actualy BASED only 5 blocks away!!!
Not bad distance wise!!! Their mail window actualy has a working progras
bar when I download mail in Netscape, and they are fast. I AVERAGE a
49666 BPS connection. That's pretty close to 56K!!! I hardly get busy
signals, and the connections almost always remain well connected. Shoot!
Only ONE mail came before the original obscene mail!!! Not bad if you
ask me! If that server can push that much data around so fast... well,
I'm proud to be a user of rural connections of Response Inc.

Prairie.lakes on the other hand were quite annoying (anyone remember
that old address of mine? :) and they didn't even have a working
progress bar in Netscape at least. It just sits there and jumps to the
end once your mail is downloaded. They are slower. I have never seen a
connection above 46K and I've seen 39K connections often. The connection
itself is terrible. you can spend 30 minutes trying to sucessfuly dial
in, just to check excite tv listings or e-mail a friend.

Now, some servers (obviously with more in common to the types used bt
prairie.lakes) will save a form of temp file. The problem is if you
crash or disconnect, sometimes this file isn't deleted. The server
thinks you are still online and trying to download your mail. It can
remain this way for hours, or sometimes, restarting your computer and
letting it reconnect will clear out the file. I've had to actualy call
tech support to have them manualy delete a temp file. It's kinda funny.
They had a new techie or something but I told HIM what to do!!! HAHAHA!!!

The result of this temp file, is it'll say that your are already logged
in, enter a new password, or something along those lines.

I highly doubt your e-mail accounts are all suddenly under attack by
hackers or crackers. It's because you most lkely were disconnected
during the e-mail download. You may have never had an e-mail download go
for so long before. the computer's connection had more lime in order to fail.

I wouldn't worry. If you REALY are worried, just call their tech support
and ask if their e-mail server has a temp file problem or something similar.


Bruce Robinson wrote:
>
> > Bruce Robinson wrote:
> >>
> >> So now to my question. Did anyone have problems with their mail server
> >> when receiving that message & attachment? Such as, did your mail server
> >> hang up, and then give you a strange message when you tried to reconnect
> >> and receive your mail? And then ask you for your password?
>
> Craig Maynard replied:
> >
> > Yes.. Mine did!
> >
> > I think it's time to change my password.
>
> Yeah, that was my reaction, too. As soon as I re-entered my password as
> requested, I kicked myself -- and changed my password ASAP.
>
> Something the rest of you might think about. Problems downloading the
> message? Have to enter your password? Isn't this guy alleged to be a
> hacker? Think about it, and ...
>
> Take care,
> Bruce

--


Richard Piotter
richfile@rconnect.com

The Richfiles Robotics & TI web page:
http://richfiles.calc.org

For the BEAM Robotics list:
BEAM Robotics Tek FAQ
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/bushbo/beam/FAQ.html

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