AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

I just installed the AlphaSheild Personal Hardware Firewall. AlphaShield
supplies a utility that allows me to open any port through the firewall.
Tech Support at AlphaShield said that any port can be opened with this
utility, and that I had set up the open port properly with the utility.
I tried opening port 23. The Sheilds Up security website, though,
indicates that all of my ports are stealthed. Wouldn't Sheilds Up detect
any open port? The WindowsXP SP2 firewall is disabled and I have no
other firewall running. The only other security software that I have
running is Norton Antivirus 2007 and Sunbelt Counterspy, which I don't
believe can affect port protection or control.The hardware firewall is
situated between my Comcast cable modem and my PC. Am I misunderstanding
something here about opening ports? Please educate me

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

None wrote:

> Wouldn't Sheilds Up detect any open port?


No. ShieldsUp is a lousy implementation of a horrible misconception of a
well-known fool.

> The only other security software that I have running is Norton Antivirus

> 2007

AFAIK the Norton Antivirus junk had a packet filter included since version
2003 or so.

> Am I misunderstanding something here about opening ports?

Maybe. I dunno how your cable modem is implemented, and I don't if this
AlphaShield thingy is configured as a routing firewall.

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

They advertise that it has a 100% hackproof guarantee. Apparently, no
one has been able to hack into anyones system through this firewall
(Please don't use me to test that claim, I'm just saying that that is
what they claim).

The URL for the firewall is: http//www.alphashield.com/home.htm

Do you know of any website where port status can be reliably tested
after I temporarily disable NAV?


Sebastian G. wrote:
> None wrote:
>
>> Wouldn't Sheilds Up detect any open port?
>
>
> No. ShieldsUp is a lousy implementation of a horrible misconception of a
> well-known fool.
>
>> The only other security software that I have running is Norton Antivirus
>
> > 2007
>
> AFAIK the Norton Antivirus junk had a packet filter included since
> version 2003 or so.
>
> > Am I misunderstanding something here about opening ports?
>
> Maybe. I dunno how your cable modem is implemented, and I don't if this
> AlphaShield thingy is configured as a routing firewall.

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

None wrote:

> They advertise that it has a 100% hackproof guarantee.


I do the same for my Knipex firewall. (Knipex is a well-known cable cutting
tool.)

> Apparently, no one has been able to hack into anyones system

> through this firewall

Apparently no one has ever tried.

> Do you know of any website where port status can be reliably tested
> after I temporarily disable NAV?


Try .

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Dec 21, 8:50 am, None wrote:
> situated between my Comcast cable modem and my PC. Am I misunderstanding
> something here about opening ports? Please educate me

I would start with not using other peoples e-mail addresses!
NowHere.com is a registered domain of Burda GmbH. I strongly believe
that you are not associated, not affiliated nor otherwise have
authorization to use their domain or their e-mail addresses for your
purposes. All you do is spam their e-mail addresses! Please stop that
immediately!

Gerald

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

Sorry. I will never post to this group again. I was only looking for help.

Gerald Vogt wrote:
> On Dec 21, 8:50 am, None wrote:
>> situated between my Comcast cable modem and my PC. Am I misunderstanding
>> something here about opening ports? Please educate me
>
> I would start with not using other peoples e-mail addresses!
> NowHere.com is a registered domain of Burda GmbH. I strongly believe
> that you are not associated, not affiliated nor otherwise have
> authorization to use their domain or their e-mail addresses for your
> purposes. All you do is spam their e-mail addresses! Please stop that
> immediately!
>
> Gerald

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

None wrote:
> Sorry. I will never post to this group again. I was only looking for help.

Sorry. You are not supposed to post to any group with any faked e-mail
address. Just register some e-mail address with yahoo, hotmail, or
whatever else you like. There are also services which provide e-mail
addresses and filter spams automatically.

Would you help someone who comes cloaked, with faked identity
pretending to be somebody else?

Would you be happy if someone else used YOUR real e-mail address or
some address in one of YOUR domains?

Would you be happy if due to that you receive hundreds of spam mails
because these usenet groups are frequently harvested by spammers?

And it is no use whining about that. As you don't give a real e-mail
address it is impossible to tell you this offline. It must be
posted...

Just stop using faked e-mail addresses. It is one of important rules
when posting to usenet.

Gerald

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

None wrote:
> Sorry. I will never post to this group again. I was only looking for help.

You half-witted insignificant gob of rancid mucus .........

Oh sorry, you wanted _help_ - this is the _abuse_ forum!
Help is that way ->
;^)

(apologies to Monty Python)

Jim Ford

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

> Sorry. You are not supposed to post to any group with any faked e-mail
> address. Just register some e-mail address with yahoo, hotmail, or
> whatever else you like. There are also services which provide e-mail
> addresses and filter spams automatically.
>
> Would you help someone who comes cloaked, with faked identity
> pretending to be somebody else?
>
> Would you be happy if someone else used YOUR real e-mail address or
> some address in one of YOUR domains?
>
> Would you be happy if due to that you receive hundreds of spam mails
> because these usenet groups are frequently harvested by spammers?
>
> And it is no use whining about that. As you don't give a real e-mail
> address it is impossible to tell you this offline. It must be
> posted...
>
> Just stop using faked e-mail addresses. It is one of important rules
> when posting to usenet.

That's a position I have never seen stated before. From what I can tell
many people intentionally use a fake email address on Usenet precisely
because addresses are harvested. Any real email address/account made
visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam and malware in short order, so
what is the point? How does using a real address demonstrate the
authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the above
stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
because I wish harm to others.

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Dec 22, 9:21 am, "Victek" wrote:
> > Sorry. You are not supposed to post to any group with any faked e-mail
> > address. Just register some e-mail address with yahoo, hotmail, or
> > whatever else you like. There are also services which provide e-mail
> > addresses and filter spams automatically.
>
> > Would you help someone who comes cloaked, with faked identity
> > pretending to be somebody else?
>
> > Would you be happy if someone else used YOUR real e-mail address or
> > some address in one of YOUR domains?
>
> > Would you be happy if due to that you receive hundreds of spam mails
> > because these usenet groups are frequently harvested by spammers?
>
> > And it is no use whining about that. As you don't give a real e-mail
> > address it is impossible to tell you this offline. It must be
> > posted...
>
> > Just stop using faked e-mail addresses. It is one of important rules
> > when posting to usenet.
>
> That's a position I have never seen stated before. From what I can tell
> many people intentionally use a fake email address on Usenet precisely
> because addresses are harvested. Any real email address/account made
> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam and malware in short order, so
> what is the point? How does using a real address demonstrate the
> authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the above
> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
> because I wish harm to others.

By using an email address with domain xyz.com you do harm to the owner
of that domain. You generate spam traffic to that domain on that email
address. As you wrote yourself, "any real email address[...] made
visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam[...]". If you want to
protect yourself from spam why do you direct it simply to someone
else? And even if the actual email address you have used now is not in
use at the moment it may be used in the future (e.g. if they activate
a catch all address) and it also generates delivery attempts to the
mail server of that domain, i.e. unnecessary traffic.

You want to protect yourself from spam and make other people suffer
for that by using a real email address which does not belong to you.

You use a domain name to which you are not associated nor affiliated
to.

How would I know that this is not real?

If you believe that it is so important that noone is able to contact
you then use a domain name which does not exist or is reserved for
other purposes and will never has any mail delivered, e.g. example.com
or .invalid. See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt for more details.

Still, a working e-mail address which you read has many advantages
because, for instance, we could take this conversion here off the
group because it is off-topic. Obviously, I can't because there is no
e-mail address to which I could send you an e-mail.

You could either get an e-mail address with a good spam filtering
service. I use spamcop which filters spams out and even allows me to
report those spam e-mails to ISPs. (We don't have to discuss here
whether this helps or not...) I use this e-mail only in not so
important places like here thus in case some non-spam gets filtered
out it is not so important.

Of course, you could also simply subscribe to Yahoo, Hotmail or any
other free mail service. Use that e-mail address for things like
usenet posts until you'll find that it is too much spam. Then let it
sleep and get a different one. Then at least the spam e-mails arrive
at services which deal with those at large scale and not a small
domain with a small mail server...

Gerald

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

>> > Just stop using faked e-mail addresses. It is one of important rules
>> > when posting to usenet.
>>
>> That's a position I have never seen stated before. From what I can tell
>> many people intentionally use a fake email address on Usenet precisely
>> because addresses are harvested. Any real email address/account made
>> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam and malware in short order,
>> so
>> what is the point? How does using a real address demonstrate the
>> authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the
>> above
>> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
>> because I wish harm to others.
>
> By using an email address with domain xyz.com you do harm to the owner
> of that domain. You generate spam traffic to that domain on that email
> address. As you wrote yourself, "any real email address[...] made
> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam[...]". If you want to
> protect yourself from spam why do you direct it simply to someone
> else? And even if the actual email address you have used now is not in
> use at the moment it may be used in the future (e.g. if they activate
> a catch all address) and it also generates delivery attempts to the
> mail server of that domain, i.e. unnecessary traffic.
>
> You want to protect yourself from spam and make other people suffer
> for that by using a real email address which does not belong to you.
>
> You use a domain name to which you are not associated nor affiliated
> to.
>
> How would I know that this is not real?
>
> If you believe that it is so important that noone is able to contact
> you then use a domain name which does not exist or is reserved for
> other purposes and will never has any mail delivered, e.g. example.com
> or .invalid. See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt for more details.
>
> Still, a working e-mail address which you read has many advantages
> because, for instance, we could take this conversion here off the
> group because it is off-topic. Obviously, I can't because there is no
> e-mail address to which I could send you an e-mail.
>
> You could either get an e-mail address with a good spam filtering
> service. I use spamcop which filters spams out and even allows me to
> report those spam e-mails to ISPs. (We don't have to discuss here
> whether this helps or not...) I use this e-mail only in not so
> important places like here thus in case some non-spam gets filtered
> out it is not so important.
>
> Of course, you could also simply subscribe to Yahoo, Hotmail or any
> other free mail service. Use that e-mail address for things like
> usenet posts until you'll find that it is too much spam. Then let it
> sleep and get a different one. Then at least the spam e-mails arrive
> at services which deal with those at large scale and not a small
> domain with a small mail server...

You make valid points and I agree. When I created the fake email address
"victek@xyz.com it didn't occur to me that it was actually a valid domain.
For the time being I have changed this to victek@xyz.invalid. I will
consider your suggestion of setting up a valid account just for Usenet
posting. I used a Yahoo email address for a time until the spam became so
bad that it was impossible to see the valid email. Under those
circumstances no one who responded to a Usenet post would be able to reach
me in spite of the address being valid. That was some time ago though and
perhaps spam filtering is more effective now...

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:56:08 GMT, Victek wrote:

> You make valid points and I agree. When I created the fake email address
> "victek@xyz.com

$ host xyz.com
xyz.com has address 64.146.134.38
xyz.com mail is handled by 10 penguin.xyz.com.
xyz.com mail is handled by 20 mail.xyz.com.


> it didn't occur to me that it was actually a valid domain.

Does not matter even if it is not a valid domain, the domain may
become valid later.

Here you can use these if you like
victek@mouse-potato.com
victek@nomail.afraid.org

You can check out the domain ip address with the ping command.

The sad part is victek will be scraped and used on valid domains by
spammers which will aggravate victek@some_other.domain

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

Hi,

> Any real email address/account made
> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam and malware in short order,


Wrong. I use this address since ages.

> so
> what is the point?

Fake as you want, but make sure, that you do not use addresses owned by
others.


> How does using a real address demonstrate the
> authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the above
> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
> because I wish harm to others.

So why do you do harm to the owner of xyz.com? Michael Galassi receives
all the spam you are not getting because you do not control the domain.

Get a free account somewhere and use it as spamtrap.


Cheers,
Jens

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

Gerald Vogt wrote:

> By using an email address with domain xyz.com you do harm to the owner
> of that domain. You generate spam traffic to that domain on that email
> address. As you wrote yourself, "any real email address[...] made
> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam[...]".

I guess that's why I sometimes get bounces of email that doesn't
originate from me. I've been pretty slap-happy in exposing my real
address on the net for years and really ought to change it!

Jim Ford

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

Victek wrote:


> That's a position I have never seen stated before. From what I can tell
> many people intentionally use a fake email address on Usenet precisely
> because addresses are harvested. Any real email address/account made
> visible on Usenet is rendered useless by spam and malware in short order, so
> what is the point?


Yeah, what's the point? You're not supposed to provide any mail address that
you actually read, you're free to provide the address of a mailbox that
simply deletes every incoming mail, fully distinct from the mail addresses
you actually use for communication.

The purpose of this is to avoid error messages at the MUA.

> My email address is fake, but only for the above

> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
> because I wish harm to others.

But you do. You're sending Michael Galassi, the owner of xyz.com, all your
bounces.

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

Victek wrote:


> For the time being I have changed this to victek@xyz.invalid.


I tried sending you my reply via eMail, but my MUA only told me that the
address is invalid. Is it fun to cause errors like this?

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

> Fake as you want, but make sure, that you do not use addresses owned by
> others.
>
>
>> How does using a real address demonstrate the
>> authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the
>> above
>> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
>> because I wish harm to others.
>
> So why do you do harm to the owner of xyz.com? Michael Galassi receives
> all the spam you are not getting because you do not control the domain.
>

OK, is this better now?

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

Victek wrote:
> OK, is this better now?

No.

Why don't you use an .invalid adress?

Yours,
VB.
--
The file name of an indirect node file is the string "iNode" immediately
followed by the link reference converted to decimal text, with no leading
zeroes. For example, an indirect node file with link reference 123 would
have the name "iNode123". - HFS Plus Volume Format, MacOS X

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:56:50 GMT, Victek wrote:

>> Fake as you want, but make sure, that you do not use addresses owned by
>> others.
>>
>>
>>> How does using a real address demonstrate the
>>> authenticity of the user? My email address is fake, but only for the
>>> above
>>> stated reasons and not because I am pretending to be someone I'm not or
>>> because I wish harm to others.
>>
>> So why do you do harm to the owner of xyz.com? Michael Galassi receives
>> all the spam you are not getting because you do not control the domain.
>>
>
> OK, is this better now?

Munging Your Email Address
http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm

How to mung your email address for newsgroups
(Without causing harm to someone else)
http://www.2kevin.net/munging.html

Address Munging FAQ: "Spam-Blocking" Your Email Address
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/munging-address/

Avoiding Spam
http://cexx.org/spam.htm

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:56:50 GMT, Victek wrote:
>
> OK, is this better now?

Only if you have registered for that domain,

$ host fake-email-address.com
fake-email-address.com has address 208.69.32.170

Trust me, get a real email address at some domain
or use
mouse-potato.com or nomail.afraid.org

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Dec 23, 2:14 am, ChronJob wrote:
> Gerald Vogt wrote in news:5954dcdd-c014-4069-a8a2-
> 1d001ea31...@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
>
> > On Dec 21, 8:50 am, None wrote:
> >> situated between my Comcast cable modem and my PC. Am I misunderstanding
> >> something here about opening ports? Please educate me
>
> > I would start with not using other peoples e-mail addresses!
> > NowHere.com is a registered domain of Burda GmbH. I strongly believe
> > that you are not associated, not affiliated nor otherwise have
> > authorization to use their domain or their e-mail addresses for your
> > purposes. All you do is spam their e-mail addresses! Please stop that
> > immediately!
>
> Gerald, shut your cakehole.

It would be good if you learned some rules of the usenet you post to
instead of insulting others or trying to start flame wars...

I gave arguments why I wrote that comment.

Your post only lacks of everything except personal insult.

Gerald

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

> Munging Your Email Address
> http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm
>
> How to mung your email address for newsgroups
> (Without causing harm to someone else)
> http://www.2kevin.net/munging.html
>
> Address Munging FAQ: "Spam-Blocking" Your Email Address
> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/munging-address/
>
> Avoiding Spam
> http://cexx.org/spam.htm

Thanks for the links. I think I have this setup better now. Tell me what
you think.

Re: Alpha Shield Personal Hardware Firewall

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:37:22 GMT, Victek wrote:

>> Munging Your Email Address
>> http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm
>>
>> How to mung your email address for newsgroups
>> (Without causing harm to someone else)
>> http://www.2kevin.net/munging.html
>>
>> Address Munging FAQ: "Spam-Blocking" Your Email Address
>> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/munging-address/
>>
>> Avoiding Spam
>> http://cexx.org/spam.htm
>
> Thanks for the links. I think I have this setup better now. Tell me what
> you think.

Looking good :)

Re: AlphaShield Personal Hardware Firewall

> I just installed the AlphaSheild Personal Hardware Firewall. AlphaShield
> supplies a utility that allows me to open any port through the firewall.
> Tech Support at AlphaShield said that any port can be opened with this
> utility, and that I had set up the open port properly with the utility. I
> tried opening port 23. The Sheilds Up security website, though, indicates
> that all of my ports are stealthed. Wouldn't Sheilds Up detect any open
> port? The WindowsXP SP2 firewall is disabled and I have no other firewall
> running. The only other security software that I have running is Norton
> Antivirus 2007 and Sunbelt Counterspy, which I don't believe can affect
> port protection or control.The hardware firewall is situated between my
> Comcast cable modem and my PC. Am I misunderstanding something here about
> opening ports? Please educate me

What are you attempting to accomplish by opening port 23? Why not do
whatever you're trying to do that requires that port 23 be open and see if
it works?