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I logged into my hotmail account today and get a strange box that said type in these characters before it will let you go any further. It looks like it is MSN generated but has anyone else got one otherwise I might have a bloody virus.

Paula wrote:I logged into my hotmail account today and get a strange box that said type in these characters before it will let you go any further. It looks like it is MSN generated but has anyone else got one otherwise I might have a bloody virus.

Hi Paula,

Never heard of this, but some viruses are clever and can easily hijack your computer. I bought Norton Internet 2005, for which can be picked up for between £20 - £50, depending on where you look. When I ran it I had a Trojan horse virus.

Hi Paula,

this is MSN-generated. The purpose is to avoid machines logging in. I suppose that you might have tried to send an email using Outlook Express or some client software like that using the IMAP protocol. You will have received an error message then, and when you tried to log into hotmail (web interface) you had to decipher those strange letters.

All this is part of the SPAM protection policy. A spammer could create a hotmail account, and then make a machine send hundreds of thousands of emails without typing more than just a short command. This has been done in the past. To avoid this, MSN doesn't send mails anymore when you connect via client software. From the web interface you can't mass send effectively.

After trying to process a "send" via IMAP the account will be locked until someone correctly deciphers the characters in the "strange box".

I hope this information helps.

Cheers
tom

Thanks Tom - I understood bits of that The thing that concerns me is the message you have to type is not very clear and it says if you can't see it then download a voice message and it was an executable file. I know someone who recently got their MSN hijacked. I ran a virus checker and I have a couple of viruses nothing too horrendeous admail and something else so I think I will have to grab someone to disinfect them.

Hey Paula,

you won't have to download the file. It's not a problem, if you mistype the characters. You'll get a new set to try again. I once succeeded with my fourth attempt... (Sometimes these darn letters are bl**dy illegible...)

Cheers
tom

Tom is right.

It's called a "turing test".

You'll find the most information about it by searching on:
+hotmail +"turing test"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search


It's very controversial, esp wrt the visually impaired.
(I read somewhere that hotmail was testing an audio work-around.)

I will do it tonight then. The letters are so fragmentated they are almost impossible to read. It does say it is to make sure an automated computer isn't accessing it.

They should put more information out about it. I had no idea what it was all about. Thanks for the link Greg.