Join Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center on Facebook Follow @slipstickcom on Twitter



Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 9, Number 6

Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 6, 23 June 2004, of Exchange Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook.

Today's highlights:

Regular features:

  • Other Resources

 

 

 

EMBARRASSING MOMENTS IN E-MAIL

After my embarrassing approval of spam last week, I received enough "embarrassing moments in e-mail" replies to fill several newsletters. While I won't bore you with the details, I'll share some of the lessons learned and maybe it'll prevent you from making the same mistake.

We've all heard embarrassing stories about sending personal e-mail to huge internal distribution lists. Some of our readers were on the DLs, a few were the ones sending it. Some blamed Outlook 2002/2003's autocomplete feature. Autocomplete makes it easy to send messages to frequent contacts, but if you aren't paying attention when you select the address you can easily choose the wrong David or Jill. Others said they typed names in the To field and had autoresolution disabled, so the names didn't resolve immediately. When they hit Send, Outlook picked what it thought was the correct address. Unfortunately Outlook was wrong.

Other readers reported they copied text from another message or document, with the intention of updating it before sending. Some people reported working with templates containing fields they needed to complete, marked with "[enter recipients name here]" and sending it without completing the fields. Others started to update a message, but forget to change the subject line or other details. .

During the Office 2003 beta test, one beta tester requested a dialog be added to Outlook that asked "Are you sure you want to send this message to <e-mail address>?" after he mistakenly sent a message to the wrong person. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be much help as most people would disable the dialog after the first "Are you sure?". SSW's LookOut! For Outlook: http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/lookOut/

RECALLING SENT MESSAGES

Bob writes "I wrote a reply to a co-worker in anger and left it open on my desktop. Later I accidentally sent it. Thankfully, this is one time Message Recall worked. Moral of my story? I learned to close messages and save them to Drafts instead of leaving them open on the Task bar."

Read complete article...

TEACHING E-MAIL ETIQUETTE

Many embarrassing moments are the result of lack of knowledge of netiquette and "newbie mistakes". Few users need trained on how to open an e-mail client, type a message and send it, but if no one takes the time to teach users the finer points of using e-mail, how will they know that typing in all caps (because it's easier for the sender to read on the screen) means you are screaming at the recipient? Other common mistakes, like forwarding every hoax or virus alert to everyone in the address book, are easily avoided with proper training.

If your company doesn't have e-mail training and usage guidelines in place, or even if they do, download the "Commander's Guide to Managing E-mail". Not only does it include many useful do's and don'ts, it also has some great tips for managing your e-mail and avoiding information overload. It's full of ideas for any company writing their own guidelines and recommended reading for individual users.

"Commander's Guide to Managing E-mail"  

Help Users Take Command of E-mail, by Sue Mosher 

SPOOFED BY SPAMMERS

My accident was more embarrassing to me because I spent most of the previous evening fighting a losing battle against a trojan army of computers controlled by spammers who are using my cdolive domain name in their spam. I was reviewing NDRs for messages sent by zombies and reporting the infected computers to the owner's ISP, often cable and DSL providers. I know it won't make a dent in the sea of spam, but if the owners are notified, it's a valuable lesson, one I hope they learn from.

As a result of various policies in place to prevent spamming or make it more costly, spammers began installing trojans on other people's computers and using them to send the spam. To help escape detection, they use false From addresses, spoofing the address in one of several formats from random letters to names appended with letters: vfcdregt@cdolive.com or mary.whitevb@cdolive.com. They often also use the domain name in the header and a quick glance at the header makes it appears the domain is the true sender: "cdolive.com (pcp01337659pcs.kensgt01.pa.comcast.net [68.81.122.253])".

The zombies are distributed using the same techniques used for viruses, usually via e-mail, but chats and websites are also used. Once installed, the spammers have control of the infected computer and personal and financial data is at risk.

By limiting the number of messages they send from each computer, the spammers can avoid detection, and because they have hundreds or thousands of infected computers to work with, they can easily send 100,000 messages within minutes without causing an unusual spike in bandwidth usage. If the owner of the machine discovers they're infected and cleans up the machine, the spammer easily replaces it with another computer under their control. If your computer is infected, the best method of cleaning it up is with a reformat and reinstall. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way you can be sure the computer is clean. And finally, if your computer is infected with a zombie, virus, or Trojan, remember to change all of your passwords and account numbers.

Spybot Search & Destroy
How to clean up an infected computer

Other Resources

COMMANDER'S GUIDE TO MANAGING E-MAIL
http://www2.acc.af.mil/library/commander's%20guide%20to%20managing%20%20e-mail.doc
An excellent guide on the basics of e-mail management and usage, a must read for any organization developing e-mail usage policies and training materials.

OUTLOOK VBA CODE SAMPLES
http://www.slovaktech.com/code_samples.htm
These Outlook VBA code samples are great for users who need a feature but can't write code as well as budding Outlook developers to learn from. Included in the available code samples are VBA procedures to remove attachments from selected messages, insert the date and time in a message, get the senders e-mail address, get internet headers, create a toolbar button that contains a hyperlink to a website, add a disclaimer to e-mail, extract a distribution list to a Word document, sort the Outlook address book, change the FileAs setting for contacts, and a FolderInspector Wrapper. All samples were written by Outlook developer Ken Slovak.

More Information

Click here to subscribe to the Exchange Messaging Outlook newsletter. 
Exchange Messaging Outlook Newsletter back issues
ISSN 1523-7990 Copyright 1996-2011, Slipstick Systems and CDOLive LLC. All rights reserved.

Updated Friday September 09 2011

Copyright Slipstick Systems. All rights reserved.
Send comments using our Feedback page

Back to Top