At home, you don't store everything you need in your trash can or let your trash sit. Your trash is contaminated; letting it sit would only allow the contamination to spread to the things you value.
The same is true for the trash on your computer. Recycle bins and trash folders are places where viruses can hide. You need to empty your recycle bins regularly to avoid contaminating the rest of your computer. Make the following part of a weekly clean-up routine:
If you have been working in Eudora, you might be expecting to clean up or backup the location where Thunderbird holds your attachments. You might look for this location, but you will never find it.
Why? Thunderbird does not store your attachments in a permanent location. On a Windows machine, any attachments you open will be placed in a temporary location (eg. temp) that is periodically emptied. If you want to keep an attachment, it's up to you to save it somewhere permanent. Here's how:
In Thunderbird, open the message that contains the attachment.
Right-click the attachment and select Save.
Save the attachment to a permanent location.
Tip: Don't forget to do a little clean up on the location you choose for saved attachments. Something you need to keep this year may not be useful 5 years from now!
Thanks to Marti Lindsay, Life Science Library for suggesting this tip!
To set Thunderbird as your default mail client in Microsoft Word:
Go to the Start menu and select the Control Panel.
Double-click on the Add or Remove Programs option and then choose Set Program Access and Defaults on the left side of the box.
Click on Custom and then click on the arrows icon (two arrows pointing down on the right side of the box). Under Choose a default email program, select Thunderbird and click OK.
Thanks to Nicole Ortmann, E-Mail Migration Assistant of I-Tech, for submitting this tip!
A phishing scam is an attempt to fish for personal information and access to accounts by posing as a trusted source, like a bank, an IT department, a government official, or even a friend. To learn more about how to avoid getting "phished in", read on...
1. Avoid giving your passwords to third-party sites.
Don't offer up your password to anyone or anywhere but to the site to which it belongs. If there is an issue with your account, a real IT professional won't need to ask you for your password; he or she can reset it.
If you want an application to work with your Facebook, your Twitter, or other account, there should be APIs (or application programming interfaces) that allow it to do so without you sharing your password. Many Twitter and Facebook accounts have been hacked by people sharing their passwords with malevolent applications. These applications then message their friends with spam, phishing scams, or other security threats. Which brings us to...
2. Always verify links and attachments before clicking on them.
If you have ever worked on a Web page, you know how easy it is code a hyperlink (legitimate website). You could get a link that looks like it's from you bank, but link to someone's fake site. You could get a link that looks like a funny video from a friend, but it was a virus or malware from a friends hacked account.
Attachments can contain malware, or software that runs without your consent (viruses, worms, spyware, etc.) Many other file types, including Microsoft Office files, can contain malicious code. (If you've ever opened an Office file and gotten a security warning about macros, this because viruses can be sent through the marcos in any office file.)
Before you click, try the following:
Make sure the sender is legitimate and he or she intended to send it. . Call the sender on the phone if you weren’t expecting an attachment. (If you are sending an attachment, let recipients know in person or via phone to expect it.)
Hover over the hyperlinks to check URLS before clicking on them. (Does the URL match the text of the link? Do you recognize the URL where you are being sent? Be suspicious of URLs that are a few letters off from legitimate sites or substitute .gov with .com, etc.)
Weigh the risks with the benefits.
3. Know what you are downloading and/or installing.
Don't treat downloading and installing like an impulse buy. Make sure people you know and trust have heard of the application. Ask I-Tech if they know of any compatibility issues it may have.
Just like coding a hyperlink to say anything, buttons can be coded to do anything as well. If you ever get prompted to install software that you don't want and you are suspicious of it, don't just close or cancel:
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
In Task Manager click on the Applications tab.
Select the program or browser asking you to install and click the End Task button.
4. Keep yourself up-to-date.
Threats are out there. Just as we get smarter and the software to prevent attacks gets better, the criminals are getting smarter and creating better ways to compromise your machine. You need to treat security as an ongoing process:
Periodically your mailboxes get corrupted from use. Try compacting your folders. (It's sort of like spring cleaning; it lets your email client know where to find things.)
For Thunderbird users, go to File→Compact Folders.
For Eudora users, go to Special→Compact Mailboxes.
After that has run, your email should be back to normal. If not, when you request help from your IT support people, you can let them know that you've already done this step and skip some of the phone tag!
To keep your mailboxes running smoothly in the future, perform regular clean up:
Make sure folder names do not contain special characters like "@, !, /, _, or $".
Archive or delete mail according to recommended schedules.
Compact your mailboxes according to the instructions above.
Before saving your filter, add a second condition:
In Eudora:
In the unlabeled dropdown menu, select and.
From the Header dropdown menu, select <>.
Select contains from the next unlabeled dropdown menu.
Enter email.psu.edu into the text box.
In Thunderbird:
Under For incoming messages that, click the Match all of the following option and click the plus sign ( + ).
In the first dropdown menu, select To or cc.
In the second dropdown menu, select contains.
Enter email.psu.edu into the textbox.
Save your filter as the instructions for your client instruct you to do. Your filter will filter only PSU-flagged spam coming to an invalid address.
Note: You can also use these instructions to create refined filters on other problem addresses. For example, create two more new filters, follow these instructions and susbsitituting email.psu.edu with:
mail.psu.edu
psulias.psu.edu
With these filters running, you will catch spam flagged coming from all of these addresses!
Warning: For this filter to work, please make sure you are giving out your correct Penn State email address, so that legitimate mail may be distinguished from spam. (See http://alerts.its.psu.edu/alert-1102)
Special thanks to Susan Ware, Vairo Library, Brandywine, and David Hutchinson, MTSS, for suggesting this tip!
If you want to add folks to your Address Book who have sent you emails,
just follow this easy steps:
Click on the user's name in any of these sections of your email message: To, From, or CC. The user names are hyperlinked with their "mailto:" addresses.
Again, our thanks to Sandy Ball for this great Tip!
There are times when you need to resend an existing message. Thunderbird offers an easy way to do this: From the Message drop-down menu, choose: Edit Message As New
Thunderbird will open the message you are currently viewing in a new message composition window. There, you can make any necessary edits, edit the To/CC fields as needed, and then re-send your message.
Thanks to Sandy Ball and Nikki Massaro Kauffman for this handy tip!
Thunderbird uses a default font size of “8” to display the messages in your In Box. You can easily increase the size of the font to create a larger display of the same messages. So if your eyes could use a break from small print, give this Tip a try:
1. Open any of these programs (NotePad, WordPad or DreamWeaver); then make a new file containing the text shown in red below. Then type “save as” and name your file: userChrome.css
/* * Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning */ @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */ /* * Make all the default font sizes 20 pt: */ * { font-size: 10pt !important }
2. Next, go to C:\Documents and Settings\[yourusername]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles
3. There, you'll find a folder with the ending ".default"; click on this folder
4. In the .default folder, create a new folder called chrome
5. Double click to open the chrome folder
6. Copy or move your newly created userChrome.css file into the chrome folder
7. Finally, open Thunderbird. Your messages will display in the revised font size
Hint: If the font size is too large or too small, you can use NotePad or WordPad to easily change the font size. Note that the file shown here conbtains "font-size: 10pt" ... you can simply increase or decrease the number as needed.
The Thunderbird email client will soon replace Eudora throughout the University Libraries. We already have a number of Thunderbird users at campus locations, and some at University Park.
Nikki Massaro Kauffman has created a number of useful Thunderbird how-to topics on I-Tech's Email Migration page. Here are some of the topics:
Intro to the Thunderbird Client Intro to the Thunderbird Client Thunderbird Add-ons Thunderbird Junk Filtering Thunderbird Address Book Thunderbird vCards and Signatures Troubleshooting Corrupt Mailboxes & Filters
Whether you're a seasoned Thunderbird user, or a soon-to-be fledgling, rest assured that Thunderbird documentation is available to help.
Tip suggested by Donna Swartz, Business Office, and Karen Struble, Development.
Someone keeps sending me winmail.dat files that I can't open. What are they? What can I do? Hmm... Let's answer these questions one at a time.
What is winmail.dat?
A winmail.dat is the file Microsoft Outlook generates when an Outlook message is sent in Rich Text Format or as HTML mail. In other words, if the sender of the message is on Outlook and uses anything other than plain text—things like colors, fonts, italics, etc.—the message will be send as a winmail.dat attachment.
For other Outlook users, this is not a problem. Their email clients can open the message and view it exactly as they composed it. However, many other clients are unable to open this message. Depending on the options they have selected on send, they either get a plain text message plus the attachment they cannot open or—worse yet—no message at all, just the attachment.
What can I do?
If you receive a winmail.dat file and cannot open it, you probably want to know what your options are. Your best option is to contact the sender and ask him/her to send the message as plain text (usually found somewhere under Outlook's Tools→Options menu). top
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