Auditors

[Merlin820 32]

Hi

I currently have my personal email with Yahoo but I am not entirely unconvinced that it is via Yahoo that we have had our latest virus at home. This is the second one.

I have been getting some dubious emails from contacts, one of which I opened as I know the person, communicate regularly by email but by the time I realised it was probably too late.

Anyway, virus is cleared and I am going to set up a new email account and wondered if there were any recommendations. I know it's never totally secure but it's worth a try. We've also been recommended MAC but I am not sure of the difference and Mr Merlin and I have agreed that if it happens again we are going to look at purchasing so could someone explain in simple terms please.

Thanks.

[Marricked 0]

I personally used gmail for years, had no problems with it whatsoever.

[mph 52]

I find googlemail very good. its got the bonus of you can fully sync it with an iphone if you have one. via google I have a calendar, contact and email and all sync to my phone. my phone recently broke and when I had it replace I just put in the email details and all was back to how it was after 5 minutes of sync (which it does in real time)

also it the phone were ever to get lost just change you google password and it will wipe the phone phone until the password is change on it.

Also had the issue where some sort of virus tried to access my account, google automatically disabled the email facility and cured to prevent it being passed on to my contact

google all the way

[Administrative Account 7]

No matter what email provider you use there is always the risk of downloading a virus or spam from the server, I pay for my email and even that doesn't stop it.

Can I recommend Mailwasher to you?

What this does is enable you to view all the emails sent to you on the server before you download them, you can see by the size of the email if there are likely to be any suspicious attachments and you can click on the emails to view the text before you download them.

I use it, and over the course of a weekend I will get approx 600 emails sent to my business email address and most of them are spam and rubbish that I do not want to download. By using this simple program I on average cut the number of emails down from 600 to about 30.

[Paradox + 666]

I use both Hotmail and Gmail. Both are good at what they do, but there tends to be a whole lot more spam allowed through with Hotmail.

[GaryW 160]

I'm paying out a small amount each month (£5) for my own domain and mail hosting but then this gives me a lot of additional hosting options that are quite useful and might be a little over the top for what you seek.

[Bubba1546080759 335]

Gmail or googlemail, both the same just ones easier to type. No spam or anything, unlike my hotmail account which I get around 100 spam emails a day?!

[Administrative Account 7]

I use hotmail and my Sky account e-mail. Very little in the way of spam and never had a virus.

Where a site needs an e-mail address for verification etc but you are reluctant to give yours out for fear of spam etc I use something like'MyTrashMail.com' or one of the many others. You can give an e-mail address that you only use once, check it on line and ignore for evermore, or you can use it again and again, if you need another just use a different e-mail, nothing to set up no fees to pay, easy.

[Kenz 63]

Gmail is very popular and provides a generous amount of storage for your mail. My primary account is with AOL which I've had for years and never had any problems with it. Very, very little in the way of Spam, next to none makes it into Outlook on my desktop with most caught in their Junk folder. The choice is yours

[Burnsy2023 2,895]

Most email providers have near 100% virus detection. If you get a virus from an email, it'll almost certainly be from a link that you click.

I think the real question should be what sort of security do you have on your computer? Do you run XP as an administrator?

The email provider wont' help apart from spam detection.

Edited January 28, 2011 by Burnsy2023

[Merlin820 32]

We used to have AVG then we got Sky Broadband and put McAfee on. Then we got the first virus. The guy who fixed it put Avast on it for us and we've just had the second virus. We now have gone back to AVG and put Malwarebytes on too.

I can't remember clicking on a link on the email but it's not impossible. I got a few emails from a couple of contacts that looked dubious and never opened them after that.

I don't understand what you've said Burnsy, maybe it's me, you say that most email providers have near 100% virus protection then say the email provider won't help. So are you saying they won't flag up a suspicious email? It's possible it may not have come through Yahoo but it did not throw up any alert when these emails came through so obviously it failed on that score and we are trying to rule out sources.

I think I'll try Gmail and the Mailwasher, thanks Rocket.

[GaryW 160]

I don't understand what you've said Burnsy, maybe it's me, you say that most email providers have near 100% virus protection then say the email provider won't help. So are you saying they won't flag up a suspicious email? It's possible it may not have come through Yahoo but it did not throw up any alert when these emails came through so obviously it failed on that score and we are trying to rule out sources.

there is no such thing. I've had a scenario where I've submitted a virus to various AV vendors. Three months later, software like AVG still passed the file as clean.

AV software is always a losing battle due to the time required to update the definition files.

[Burnsy2023 2,895]

We used to have AVG then we got Sky Broadband and put McAfee on. Then we got the first virus. The guy who fixed it put Avast on it for us and we've just had the second virus. We now have gone back to AVG and put Malwarebytes on too.

I can't remember clicking on a link on the email but it's not impossible. I got a few emails from a couple of contacts that looked dubious and never opened them after that.

I don't understand what you've said Burnsy, maybe it's me, you say that most email providers have near 100% virus protection then say the email provider won't help. So are you saying they won't flag up a suspicious email? It's possible it may not have come through Yahoo but it did not throw up any alert when these emails came through so obviously it failed on that score and we are trying to rule out sources.

I think I'll try Gmail and the Mailwasher, thanks Rocket.

It's much better not to rely on anti-virus/anti-malware programs as your only defence. The majority of viruses are rendered inert by not running as an administrator. So I go back to my previous question, are you running XP as an administrator? If so, you need to sort that.

[Merlin820 32]

It's much better not to rely on anti-virus/anti-malware programs as your only defence. The majority of viruses are rendered inert by not running as an administrator. So I go back to my previous question, are you running XP as an administrator? If so, you need to sort that.

Sorry if it comes across as me being difficult, I'm not, I'm just not that IT literate as you can probably tell. I am set up as an administrator on our PC, my husband is the other and we all have separate accounts although the kids have their own laptops now so it doesn't get that much use. Do I need to take myself off as an admin then?

[Burnsy2023 2,895]

Sorry if it comes across as me being difficult, I'm not, I'm just not that IT literate as you can probably tell.

Don't worry, I'll try and make it as simple as possible for you :-)

I am set up as an administrator on our PC, my husband is the other and we all have separate accounts although the kids have their own laptops now so it doesn't get that much use. Do I need to take myself off as an admin then?

Right, what I would suggest is for you both to downgrade your accounts to standard user accounts and set up another account you both know the password to as an administrator.

Edit: on second thoughts, do the above in the reverse order, make the new account and then downgrade.

This will mean that you will need to 'elevate your rights' to install programs. This means that you can't install anything unless you enter your admin username and password.

Firstly, we need to make a new admin account, then change you and your husband's accounts to standard user. Look here for instructions on how to do this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279783

Say you then want to install a program like skype. Right click the setup file and select run as administrator. Type the username and password and it will install normally.

This will stop the vast amount of viruses doing anything.

Edited January 28, 2011 by Burnsy2023