Digital Rag - New Mail Facilities and some tips

Welcome to our new mail-list software. Like "Mailman" this too is open source software - called phpList from tincan limited in the UK. I've been using Mailman for quite a number of years and will continue to use it for what it was meant for - mail lists where members correspond with one another.
On the other hand, many of my customers need mail list software for sending out messages - marketing information, answers to questions, bulletins, support information, etc. where all the traffic is outgoing, and where the fact that someone has read a particular message and acted upon it (feedback) needs to be tracked somehow.

phpList does this very well. It deals with multiple newsletters and all manner of "tags" for what things different people are interested in, while keeping a single list of actual subscribers - so if someone on the list decides they want to unsubscribe from all, they can do so with minimal fuss. This compares to one of my customers' needs where they have over 50 different lists with some people on multiple lists - so dealing with moved or unsubscribed people has been a major nightmare. We're slowly moving their subscribers to this new facility. The process is a bit painful due to some of the intricacies of their particular needs, but phpList seems able to handle them.

You'll find both unsubscribe and manage links at the bottom of all the messages you get, including this one. Please let me know if you have any problems. Note that unless you check "Text" you'll get HTML mail. I promise I won't abuse this

This also marks the beginning of a new service we'll be offering - direct answers to questions posed by our subscribers. I'll be selecting questions to be answered each week and posting the answers in this newsletter. Some of these postings will likely find their way into the Digital Rag area of my blog too - but you'll see them here first.

If the question is business related, the answer will likely be sent to the "Business Notes and Answers" newsletter. If you wish to receive it too, you should subscribe using the "Preferences" link below - just click on the box beside that newsletter and press the button.
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Now on to this week's items:

As you all likely know, the 2008 Olympics are on - and the spammers and scammers have taken full advantage of this by including bogus (and in fact some real) headlines in messages purporting to come from both CNN and MSNBC - these sometimes have the headline "BREAKING NEWS" and all of them are BAD NEWS - don't open them or click on any of the links in them.

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A note from Microsoft notes that if your system has been updated recently while you were NOT logged in on an administrative account, that the Malicious Software Removal Tool may not be running. Some changes in the licensing of this software require that the Administrator account run it at least once to accept the new license terms. Once you have done this once, the tool will again correctly update and run even if you are not (and you should not be) running with Administrator priviledges.

We're OK with this tool running but still have problems with the way Microsoft handles priviledges on their systems. Sometimes you need Admin priviledges and sometimes not - confusing even to us.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=890830 gets you the tool and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891716/ is some information on figuring out if the tool is running (it SHOULD be)

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On another note: Never disable your firewall - no matter why you might think you need to

If you are having problems access a site you should work at it either by looking up similar errors in Google or other search engine (it's amazing how many times I find exactly the right answer just by cutting/pasting the error message directly into the search windo) or working with the webmaster of the site (if you can get hold of them) since the answer is likely at their end.

No matter what - don't turn off or bypass your firewall. The "average time to compromise" for an unprotected Windows machine these days is under 4 minutes - and sometime it is seconds. Just don't do it!

Hope the summer is treating you well

richard