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I want to hear these words...

Tom, an interesting person I never would have met if he hadn't married one of my best friends from high school, is having troubles with the latest virus outbreak. His sign, "The words, 'But I knew the person who sent it!' carry no weight in this room!" reminds me of one of my own longtime troubleshooting rules.

This came from one of the staff at the computer center where I worked in college. At one of our weekly meetings, he turned up and just said, "If I get an email about a problem with any one of the PCs or printers in the center, I will ignore it unless it contains the sentence, 'I turned it off, and I turned it back on again, and it still doesn't work.'"

They're still the first questions I ask when someone has a problem here: "Did you quit and restart the program? Did you reboot the computer?"

(As long as you're looking at Tom's weblog, read his letter to his daughter.)

Posted by pjm on March 2, 2004 11:27 AM |

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Tracked on March 3, 2004 8:31 AM

Comments

I was thinking about this post today as I plodded my way through my morning inbox, ruthlessly scrutinizing every email before I opened it. I got four copies of the new virus. But these viruses require a person to have an extremely skeptical, even negative outlook. Everything that you know and trust cannot actually be trusted in the email world, and I think it requires a mindset that perhaps not everyone is willing or able to adopt, as protective as it may be. Because in other areas of life, that kind of mistrustful outlook can be isolating.

Posted by: Bluerabbit | March 3, 2004 9:45 AM

i can appreciate how you might feel that having to be on your guard constantly could be viewed as a negative outlook, but i tend to feel that it’s not necessary to intensely scrutinize every piece of mail you receive if you simply apply a bit of common sense. for instance, no one i know in any area of my life - family, friends, co-workers..no one - has ever sent me an email that read simply, “here is the file you requested” (or any variant on that statement, for that matter). if i’ve actually gone through the trouble to request a file, for instance, the reply usually is much less vague.

keeping in mind that you usually have to execute the attachment to become infected, you can open emails all day long - and can scrutinize them after they’ve been opened. and, as i’ve tried in vain to communicate to people here - if it looks like bt, trust your instincts. whack it.

additionally, consider this - if, on the remote possibility it was a legitimate file, chances are excellent that it’ll be followed up at some point by the sender…”did you get that picture of the naked yak i sent ya?” when you say no, i didn’t, because you didn’t identify it as a naked yak, so i deleted it - you’ll have just taken one step in the march towards educating email users in the benefits of specificity. :)

T

Posted by: tom | March 5, 2004 9:38 AM

The latest outbreak included a rash of messages to my users in the @sinauer.com domain, with the (spoofed) return address “support” in that domain (which is a valid address, though it is never used for outgoing mail.) Nasty, nasty.

This is why I PGP-sign almost all my mail (except messages sent to mailing lists, and certain individuals whose misguided mail servers choke on the signature.) If it hasn’t got the signature, it’s (probably) not from me. Easy enough.

Fortunately, I’ve got a small user base, and I’ve got them trained - when in doubt, they ask me. Because whenever they ask, it’s usually a virus, they’re developing an appropriate level of suspicion, and sometimes they even save me the good specimens.

Posted by: pjm | March 5, 2004 9:56 AM

i got quite a chuckle myself from two emails that i received from “noreply@tomhampton.com” and “admin@tomhampton.com” telling me that i was about to have my email account revoked and that i needed to open the attached file and enter a password, etc…..and they were signed, “the tomhampton.com team”.

of course, i pretty much AM the tomhampton.com team…

T

Posted by: tom | March 5, 2004 11:31 PM

I have now had at least four notifications that my mail on the “flashesofpanic.com system” is being suspended, from the “flashesofpanic.com team”. Ha bloody ha. Got a signature on that?

Posted by: pjm | March 9, 2004 11:28 AM

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