Botnet fishers
 

I've had over a dozen spam e-mails today all with attached files to try to infect my PC so that it becomes part of a botnet. All have been "spamcopped".

If you get an "invoice" or a "statement" attached to an e-mail from a firm you've never heard of (or one you've never dealt with), don't open it!

If you've opened one already, your computer is infected and you need help.

Just for clarity, I assume that it is opening the attachment (.zip?) which infects the computer, not opening the email itself, not that I would ........?

Normally, yes. It's clicking on the attachment (most that I've seen have been .doc or .docx). Unless your PC is set to automatically open attachments (a very bad idea!).

I guess I must be a more attractive 'target' (lucky me) then, since I have been getting 'invoices' from unknown folk for 6 weeks or more.

Keef,

Let me reword that for you .....

If you get an attachment to an e-mail you're not expecting, irrespective of whether or not you know the sender.... DO NOT OPEN IT.

But then again, they're going to get lucky sooner or later - it doesn't cost them to send mega-multiples. I was actually conned (it looked like the same name as something I expected) into opening one such some months ago. But good old Avast! said 'What the !!!! do you think you're doing, I've deleted that - it's naughty'
So all was well.
In that instance.

In principle so, mixture, but in practice I get e-mails every day from people I know but with attachments I wasn't "expecting". They are usually items for inclusion on the church website, or photographs I might want to use, news about people I know, or other tidbits of information.

If I know the person, and if the file type is "safe", then I open it. None of my regular correspondents sends .exe or .scr and such files.

On the rare occasions (like one a year or so) where the email is bogus/from a hijacked account, Avast usually spots it and flags it before I do. Even then, the body text of the message is patently not from the person it says it is.

I have a neat little add-in to Thunderbird which shows against each e-mail the flag of the country it actually came from. 99% of the legitimate ones show the US or UK flag. If I see Russian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Brazilian etc then I check!

I got what I suppose was just ordinary spam - some hot totty no doubt. However, it was from Me. Darn. What do I do about that?

Now that emails are in strings of conversation, quite legitimate e's show 'Me' in bold. I've consigned it to spam for now but have to keep looking to check the spam bucket.


Kaspersky. I'm not at all sure about this. Barclays bank gives it free with three seats, and it seems too good to miss, but sometimes I have to turn it off to pay some account or another simply because I can't get past their screen. Daft, I call it.

Just before Christmas I had an email from my old friend Chief Eze....

I'd missed the old b****** who used to email me daily in the mid 00's

I presume either someone hit the wrong button or perhaps thought that the "oldies are the goodies"


PS There actually WAS a real Chief Eze - but he was damn site more dubious than any Nigerian 419 spam merchant :E:E

If you get an "invoice" or a "statement" attached to an e-mail

My German friends said today they are also receiving them in 'correct' German language format. I wonder how many other nationalities are receiving them ?

A couple of days ago I had one from the "Australian Tax Office" advising of a refund from my 2014 tax statement and a nice "click here" box to initiate the transfer :rolleyes:

I haven't filed a tax return for five years - I no longer need to.

Actually my ISP spam filter had trapped this one and held it at the server. A routine mailbox spam check revealed this specimen and a few others of clearly dubious origin.

It's worth checking this facility (spam filter) if you ISP has one. Just occasionally there can be a false positive which means a genuine and valid email can be withheld. However 95% of the time it's very effective in stopping the undesirables.

FOR