Dangerous spam
By Ruth Belena
@paid2write (5201)
May 28, 2008 10:03am CST
Spam can be dangerous to your computer if you click on a link in an email.
I just read of an awful example of this. It was sent out last week and used news of the Sichuan earthquake to convince people to open an attached document, about how an 80-year-old man was pulled out of his wrecked home 10 days after it was flattened by the earthquake in China. The document actually contained a 'trojan horse' known as the MalDoc-Fam and if you opened the document you would have downloaded it onto your computer!
I hope all myLotters have good spam filters and security and know never to open a document sent in an email from an unknown person.
Do you know of other examples of how the spammers use news items or send fake emails from Microsoft, PayPal, eBay, lotteries and variations on the well-known millions-in-a-bank account scam?
6 people like this
9 responses
@gabs8513 (48686)
• United Kingdom
28 May 08
Hi Paid2write Thanks for putting this warning out
I have very good security on here but I never open anything that I do not know what it is and definatly not in my Spam Box unless something went in there by Accident where I know what it is as that sometimes happen
I hope that People will take note of this as I also know many People are not aware that they have to have security on their Computers
3 people like this
@paid2write (5201)
•
29 May 08
Thanks gabs, I thought it was particularly nasty to use news of the Chinese earthquake for this purpose, and not everyone has a spam filter.
1 person likes this
@PearlGrace (3171)
• United States
28 May 08
Hi paid2write.
Yes, I have heard about these Trojan Horse spams and one time, after going to a website to look at different hairstyles, my computer got one! Luckily, I had a good antiviral program on and it caught it and deleted it immediately, although it took probably 10 minutes for the program to search through my computer and delete all parts of the trojan horse.
I do not know of other examples of spammers. But, I have received emails telling me they are holding hundreds of thousands of dollars for me if I just send them some money. That one (duh) is clearly a scam.
PearlGrace
@paid2write (5201)
•
29 May 08
I'm so glad your antivirus found the Trojan Horse and destroyed it. Sadly some people still believe those emails telling them there is money waiting in a bank account.
1 person likes this
@paid2write (5201)
•
28 May 08
Yes it is also important to have antivirus software installed.
1 person likes this
@isegor (117)
• Portugal
28 May 08
Since I have combined 3 things I haven't had a single problem with spam:
gmail account
Firefox browser
macbook for a computer
there 3 things put together and I don't even have to bother with anything like anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-windows, etc...
@paid2write (5201)
•
29 May 08
It's good to know these are effective when you combine all three of them. Thank you for the information.
1 person likes this
@leealice67 (221)
• China
2 Jun 08
Yes, I've got emails from an email adress many times which say that I have won XXX money and they need my detailed information etc. I reported this email adress as a spam adress. And I am angry that some people did this kind of bad things by making use of China's earthquake.
@paid2write (5201)
•
2 Jun 08
You did right to report the spam. I feel angry about someone using news of the earthquake too.
