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Bedford Ramblings
Steve Mills
Steve Mills and his wife have one daughter. They previously owned two coffee/ice cream shops, currently operate an internet sales company and teach classes, but his primary job involves the paper industry worldwide. Hobbies and interests lie in gardening, photography, recorded music and of course, their pets.
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Hey, computer techies!

Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008, at 7:03 AM

Anyone know what e-mail authentication and DomainKeys/DKIM are all about and how to use them?

I read a blurb from Yahoo about better protection from phishing e-mails and they said eBay and PayPal were now using them in their program.

Is there any way WE can filter e-mails in this way or does it have to be done by an ISP?

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  • -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 7:03 AM

  • Steve,

    do you have a url that I can look at?

    -- Posted by Evil Monkey on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 7:57 AM

  • You are talking about encrypted e-mail. The sender and receiver each have a private key and public key. The sender sends a message signed with their public key which the recipient would use to authenticate the message against the private key at the certificate authority. Signing and encrypting messages ensures that a message that is intercepted can not be read by others and it ensures that the message is actually from the sender and not a haxor. Go to http://na.pgpstore.com/product.aspx?sku=3118542 to purchase your own public and private keys. Please note that the key is valid for one e-mail address only and if you change e-mail addresses you must get a new key.

    -- Posted by nathan.evans on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 8:14 AM

  • Does that mean that we need a special key from eBay to receive their e-mails?

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 8:37 AM

  • EM, this is where I got the first info http://ymailupdates.com/blog/2007/10/04/blocking-out-the-ebay-and-paypal-phish/#...

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 8:39 AM

  • Well this is fantastic, that yahoo is doing this because then I don't have to block them anymore.

    Paypal, and Ebay has never been an issue for me or my clients. It's those "free" email accounts that seem to be the biggest problem.

    -- Posted by Evil Monkey on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 8:51 AM

  • Free always seems to come at a cost.

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 9:17 AM

  • Looks like all you have to do Steve is sign up for a free Yahoo! mail account and point your eBay and Paypal accounts to the new e-mail address.

    -- Posted by nathan.evans on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 11:20 AM

  • I would like to know why even though I have my spam blocker set to automatically delete what it considers spam(yahoo), why am I still receiving 30/40 spam emails in my inbox daily and I opened one and it wasn't even my email, it was a variation of it. So how did it get there and how do I stop it?

    -- Posted by dc_0725 on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 2:09 PM

  • Good question. I hope someone can answer that.

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 2:41 PM

  • Spammers have found ways to trick spam filters into thinking that a message is valid. For example for a while spammers were using an image of their message as the message. That method no longer works like it used to because mail server admins developed methods to combat this type of spam. Now spammers are using intentionally misspelled words and misleading subject lines to trick spam filters. Although the spam filter does not recognize the misspelled words, humans can still comprehend the message. How you stop the spam from reaching your inbox depends on many factors like whether or not you use webmail or a mail reading program like Outlook or Thunderbird. If you use a webmail service like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail then you are limited to the protections put in place by the server admins. If you use a webmail service you can still setup POP3 download of your messages to the program of your choice which will allow you to use your own spam filters. I use a server side spam filter along with two client side spam filters and I still get the occasional spam message in my inbox.

    -- Posted by nathan.evans on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 3:38 PM

  • Nathan,

    One of the questions that confuses me the most is how an e-mail comes to me when it is not my e-mail address in the To: bar.

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 4:37 PM

  • Nathan,

    One of the questions that confuses me the most is how an e-mail comes to me when it is not my e-mail address in the To: bar.

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 4:37 PM

    View the full message header and you will find your e-mail address.

    -- Posted by nathan.evans on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 8:06 PM

  • Thanks. I will check it out.

    -- Posted by stevemills on Wed, Feb 20, 2008, at 9:13 PM
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