Possible Phishing?

[MadsDad]

Over the last couple of days I've had e-mails purporting to be from Facebook telling me a 'Friend' has added a picture of me and it is letting me know because I am marked as 'a close friend' and with an attachment, zipped, of the photo. Since I am not on Facebook and do not intend to join I suspect a phisher is at work, can anyone confirm or deny this for me? (The messages have all been deleted, with attached photo still soundly zipped).

[Avtrician]

If you arent on face book, then it could be a phishing scam, or a virus/trojan payload.

You have done he right thing by dumping them.

[ExXB]

More likely just sending you to a Canadian Pharmacy ... If you've got adequate virus protection (or a Mac) opening the attachment likely wouldn't load a Trojan but it was best to simply delete the message (You should ensure it's deleted from your trash as well)

Now, if only, Anonymous or others like them would take on those behind all this crap spam. I don't mean the snakes that deliver these to you, I mean the even bigger snakes who use these tactics to get you to go to their site.

[Load Toad]

Anytime you get an email telling you some friend has a photo of you or 'you won't believe what he said about you' or 'LOL your photo!' or such like - and especially if you have never heard from them via that media or that style of language - it will 100% be a virus of some sort. Just bin it - anything important your 'mate' will be onto you via traditional means.

[OFSO]

Just an addendum: this problem also exists with LinkedIn. Any time you amend your details a veritable flood of e-mails arrives inviting you to accept contacts from old friends. Looking at the routing headers reveals all is not what it seems.....

[Tableview]

Anytime you get an email telling you some friend has a photo of you or 'you won't believe what he said about you' or 'LOL your photo!' or such like - and especially if you have never heard from them via that media or that style of language - it will 100% be a virus of some sort.

100%. I got one a couple of years ago and because it appeared to be from someone I knew and trusted via LinkedIn, I clicked on it. I was lucky because all it did was replicate itself to some of the people in my address book.

Never, ever .............

[Load Toad]

LinkedIn got Russia Hacked a while back - best change your passwords if you haven't already done so.

[mike-wsm]

Could be like I had last year, a kid kept playing computer games using my email address and I kept receiving emails from wargame three or whatever. I just blocked each one as it came up, hotmail lets you block individual addresses. No harm done.

[Pelikal]

Not totally unrelated to the opening post but I've received an email supposedly from Yahoo! Mail asking me to verify my account by clicking a link, which I haven't done.

"Dear Valid User,

This is for your own safety to avoid your account closed,you will have to verify your account by clicking this link (Link not pasted). We apologize for any inconvenience.

Customer Care"

The address looks dodgy and the profile pic shows 2 rather dodgy-looking characters. I'm using BT Internet which includes Yahoo mail and my addresses are @btinternet.com, not yahoo. Anybody else had this? Many thanks.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Yes, I've had had the Yahoo! 'verify' request, too - don't even look at them.

Never wanted Yahoo! - stupid name - but our dear Telecom changed to getting themselves transmitted via Yahoo some years ago, all downhill since.

[Pelikal]

Ex, thanks for reply, much appreciated. Had my suspicions immediately. Have to agree with your comment about the name!! Cheers.

[Milo Minderbinder]

If Yahoo need any extra verification, it will be requested the next time you log in.
They - and the other e-mail majors will NEVER send "click to confirm" links unsolicited

As to the BY / Yahoo thing - BT are simply too small to survive on their own. They needed the resources of Yahoo to provide content, advertising and hosting
However its interesting that BT are currently in the process of moving their business customers to Microsoft's servers - and at the same time taking the advantage of Microsofts "cloud" system to offer hosted Office 365 and hosted exchange mail. If you trust them with your business data its actually quite a good deal.

As I said...IF you trust them with your data

[Pelikal]

Thanks MM for info.

[Keef]

I get swarms of those "Dear Valued User" and other such nonsense. Never, ever, click on their links!

Sometimes, if it's a quiet day, I'll send them a reply from a spoof address, pretending to be convinced. It can be a hoot!

There's this lady who says she's dying of cancer: she's been dying for four years at least, since she's been writing to me off and on for that long. Her e-mail address changes every few weeks, but Elizabeth Etters goes on... and on...

Not very bright, your average spammer.

[Load Toad]

One problem though is kids using the 'puter - it must be v. difficult for a young un to see a line like 'You won't believe this photo...' or such like & not click on the link.

[Saab Dastard]

Load Toad - just make sure they do not have admin accounts! That limits the damage.

SD

[Milo Minderbinder]

and use OpenDNS and its filters

[ExXB]

Yes, I've had had the Yahoo! 'verify' request, too - don't even look at them.

Never wanted Yahoo! - stupid name - but our dear Telecom changed to getting themselves transmitted via Yahoo some years ago, all downhill since.

Answer (http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/internet101/f/yahoostory.htm): Yahoo! (spelled with an exclamation mark) is short for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". This odd and rather long name was coined in 1994 by two electrical engineering PhD candidates at Stanford University: David Filo and Jerry Yang.

The original name: "David's and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web", was appropriate, but not exactly catchy. They used the dictionary to come up with “Yahoo!”, a term that anyone can remember and say with ease. More importantly, Jerry and David said they liked the definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

In the end, the word Yahoo! did roughly describe it as a web search directory. The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo! database was arranged in directory layers. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom". And "officious" described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo! database while surfing from work.

[Pelikal]

Actually, ExXB, my first encounter with the 'Y' word was in connection with teachings by G.I.Gurdjieff, a teacher, a quite fascinating man. I have a number of works which I have attempted to digest over the years. I wondered if I could find the reference, and remarkably I found it very quickly.

From the Book GURDJIEFF Seeker of the Truth - Journeys to Remarkable Places.

There is an account in the book of his travels to somewhere in Central Asia where he learnt the teachings of the Sufis. He witnessed the healing techniques of the Sufis.

The following is just a section of the account and I apologise to the authors for taking it way out of context:

"After the patient was assigned a bed.....the chief practioner and his assistants visited each bed in turn. While the rest of the group maintained a chant of the syllables Ya HOO, Ya HUKK! the chief passed his hands over the patient..." etc.

Do I get a prize for the most misplaced posting in this forum?;)

[Milo Minderbinder]

i believe the term "Yahoo" actually originates with Jonathan Swift in "Gullivers Travels" and was applied to a fictional race he based on William Dampier's description of Australian aborigines


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier
Dampier was the first man to circumnavigate the world three times. the first by accident, in the process discovering Australia 100 years before Cook
he is also believed to be the inspiration for the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"
and he was the man who abandoned Alexander Selkirk (and so inspired Robinson Crusoe)