Discussion»Questions»Communication» Articulate/Erudite/Logical/Poised/Honest/Calm OR Bumbling/Liarly/Gibberishly Erratic? Which do you lika/no lika? Why?
I prefer articulate, erudite, logical, poised, honest, calm. I would add frank to that list as well. Why? because tends tends to be more fruitful. Preferring that list doesn't always guarantee that it will happen. I don't prefer the second list but unfortunately happens more often than the first list. Especially during a religious or political discussion.
The US prez is the latter in spades. Sadly. Thank you for your reply Durdle and Happy Monday. I have a question for you. I was going to ask it but now I shall just ask you. With regard to computer hacking if I hack your computer I get access to your Distribution List if you have one, right? Do I also have access to their distribution lists and their distribution list and their distribution lists? How deep can hacking go?
On hacking, I don't know. I don't have a distribution list of own, or not one I have created, but am on those for several organisations linked to my hobbies. I suppose if someone were to gain access to my e-posts that would give them the copies of these lists; but I don't know enough about computer security to be sure.
However I do have active protection software and I am careful to delete and block posts from suspicious sources. I have had two recently, one pretending to inform me of some goods it said I'd ordered having arrived at a particular airport; the other notified me of problems with some account or other. I'd ordered no goods form overseas, and I had no account as described! Both were plainly lies, trying to gain access to my computer, though they did look convincing.
The UK Government has an organisation called ActionFraud (or similar) to which you can report postal, telephone or internet fraud attempts, but it is not easy to use and you cannot relay the offending e-mail to it for analysis and tracing.
Thank you for your helpful reply Durdle. Here's the reason I asked you specifically. You seem to be very knowledgeable about many things and I thought maybe hacking would be one of them. Not that you're a hacker but that you would know how it works. A couple of days ago I got an email supposedly from my brother-in-law. At least it was his name that was shown as the sender but it was not the email address that my sis and brother-in-law use. So I didn't open it. I forwarded it to them so they'd know someone was using his name. Curiously my sister did open it and somewhere within the text was the name of someone she knew from long ago and they were friends and had kept in touch. So she was going to email him to find out what was going on. I have received from time to time very curious emails that puzzle me which I do not open. I had a friend I would forward them to for his review in the past. I've lost touch with him. I'm very small potatoes and not worth hacking. I do not have a distribution list at all . But some folks have very lengthy ones and I just wondered if they would be at risk for being hacked. Too bad folks spend time on such things isn't it? :(
That using others' e-mail addresses in quite common. I have had one or two whose senders pretended to be a friend, and used the friend's address, but were obviously scams. They usually tell some hard-luck story about being stuck abroad somewhere, please lend them some specified amount of money for the fare home.
The people who spend time sending these things out know that only a few will work, but it is no trouble to them to spread them as widely as possible. Most want simply to steal money, others may be money-launderers, or want to use their victim's identities and credit-cards not just to steal the money but to use it for illegal purposes. They would see even just one stolen bank-account details from a thousand attacked individuals, as worthwhile.
Occasionally, you can gain an idea of the message's source from its "Properties". It may be different on your computer but on mine, they are in a menu tagged "Page". It usually hides the origin but it did reveal one suspect message was from Zimbabwe - the name was there, in the middle of a load of computer-ese.
I Block suspect messages' senders, then Delete the message.
Durdle 