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Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Wonderful though Safari may be, I prefer to use Firefox. Today however, on opening my emails there was a peculiar piece of spam at the top of the list. Some bilge about an anti ageing cream, ostensibly. I can't delete it because the tick box at the left is itself obscured with a dollar symbol. I used Mail to get back to my emails, and the spam is not there. Nor is it there when I use Safari. After a two hour break this afternoon I went back via Firefox and the spam was gone from my inbox, but was there in my drafts folder, whereupon I deleted everything in there, opened my spam folder and there it was again. I deleted all in the spam folder, and lo and behold, there it was again in my inbox. Any ideas you chaps?

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Arrrrgh! It's back, even using Safari! A clue might be that before I was able to use Safari I was asked if I wanted to link it up with Mail. The little bar steward in question says:
$ LifeCellSkin Anti-Aging Creams Of 2014 Sponsored
Help, Gentlemen, young ladies tell me I'm already attractive enough, they couldn't take any more.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Eric, It’s the Cornish Pilchards that keep you looking good, I’m past redemption.
Sadly there are some terribly clever (but not very intelligent) people out there who really believe that constant battering will sell products. Sometimes it’s not the “product” but the subscription cash flow they want, and Yahoo seems to attract them like flies.

This one is well-known and probably aims to get recipients to sign up for what are increasingly expensive options just to get it to go away. Don’t do that, but keep an eye on Google using the query
"$ LifeCell Skin Anti-Aging Creams Of 2014 Sponsored"

You may find future solace using an Ad-Blocker:
> http://adblock.en.softonic.com/mac < (others available)

or even an email masker:
> https://dnt.abine.com/#dashboard < (others available)

Yahoo offers some advice here:
> https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140607155145AArZYaH <

It’s unlikely (but conceivable) that branding the message as Junk or rebuilding your Mailbox might help: Mail > Mailboxes > Rebuild.

Assuming you use Apple Mail, you could try delete it by going into the Mail data stores, finding the little offender and deleting it there (back up your email data first, just in case). Whether that would delete any scripting associated with it is another matter. Remember, too, that if successful, you would need to delete it from all backups too.

For POP accounts in Mavericks this is the path:
Users > Eric > Library > Mail > V2 > POP-[your account] > Inbox.mbox > [weird numbers] > Data > [dig down] > Messages (messages are suffixed “.emix”. close in on them by date and time).

Let us know how you get on.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Euan Williams
Addendum:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/05/man_wins_spam_busting_case_vs_john_lewis_waitrose_you_can_too/ <

Even the highly respectable John Lewis can sometimes put a foot wrong!

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks Euan, I'll have a go at all that tomorrow; rebuilding the Golden Flash today. (God willing).

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Hallo Euan, I've sussed it out thanks to one of those links you gave me. Its just a scam from yahoo, who feel they have the right to ram an advert in my face if I want to use their crappy web site. There is evidently no limit to their greed is there? The love of money is the root of all evil. I'll just delete yahoo from my bookmarks and try to get used to using Mail instead. Wish me luck.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
In Mail, when I want to forward an email to a group, the groups do not appear, so that I can select one. The Help menu is useless. Mail is supposedly synchronised with yahoo, but not very well. Early Mac Pro running Mountain Lion.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Eric. Yahoo is way more fishy than stale Cornish pilchards, and I have no idea what you were doing with it. So let's try again using Apple's Contacts app.

You should be able to import your addresses from elsewhere, usually by exporting them into a standard database format such as CSV (comma separated values) first.

In the Contacts app. you add to a person's Contact a ’ Note’ e.g. "Tin Miners". Then you make a Group which will include all noted “Tin Miners”. Now when you want to forward (or just send) a message to the group, just start typing Tin M... into the address slot (autocomplete) but see BCC below. Mail Preferences and Help offer a variety of options.

Optionally, all the “Tin Miners” group email addresses will appear there for you to check — and if a certain Mr McMacintosh doesn’t seem Cornish enough for this distribution you can delete the pur wee chappie — for just this distribution.

N.B.
if you use the 'To:' slot, all "Tin Miners" will see each others' addresses which may offend their sense of privacy, and can contribute to the spread of spam. So the right thing to do is to Type "Tin Mi..." into the BCC: slot, and leave the 'To:' slot blank.

I use the latest fully updated version of OSX, but I don’t recall Mountain Lion being particularly different in this area. The method works for both new emails, and forwarding emails.

Lesson? Use the Apple ecosystem, it generally works rather well.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks Euan, I'll have a go at that. Always wondered what BCC was for.....

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
I think I must have missed something here. In Contacts I entered each tin miner's details, and added the note 'TinMiners', but it does not appear to have worked. When I start to address an email, and enter T, all Mail gives me is a list of my individual contacts beginning with T, i.e. TinMiners does not appear. When I do this in Yahoo I get all my contacts beginning with T, which includes the groups beginning with T. Mind you, my Yahoo email now seems to have become unstable, which I suppose might have been the result of my mucking about with Mail. Gulp!

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Lionel Ogden
After adding Tin miners in the notes in contacts, you then need to create a smart group called Tin Miners and use the note in contacts as the search field. You should then find your tin miner contacts in that group and when you enter T in the To field, or better the Bcc field in Mail you new group should appear.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thank you Lionel,

I've succeeded in following your suggestions, and now when I enter (in the BCC field) T, the smart group Tinminers does appear; when I select it, then click on the send arrow I get the following message, " This message couldn't be sent because you haven't specified any recipients". Select a different outgoing mail server from the list below. When I click on the blue button it then says, "Error, you have not specified any recipients".

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Euan Williams
Mea culpa, too few pilchards in my diet! You should type your own email address in the To field, and NOT leave it blank. You will get your own personal copy of the group message back, but others will only see your own address as "From". Wildly embarrassed and apologetic gyrations and arm waving here :)

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Hee hee hee hee hee! I'll let you all know in due course.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Mick Burrell
You do not need to have an address in the To: line if you're using Mail as long as there is at least one in either CC: or BCC: - I do it all the time. I can't speak for the webmail version of Yahoo.

Re: Strange combination firefox/yahoo

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks Mick, I'll try that next time I need to forward something.
 
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