"Virus" mail NOT from us

[Niami DenMother]

If you're receiving email claiming to be from an eqtraders.com domain, warning that you've been sending a lot of outgoing viruses, promising that an attached file will fix the problem, etc., do NOT download the attatched file, do NOT use the durn thing, it is NOT from us.

Seems the children have targeted us again for scamming and spamming, hoping to catch a few gullible folks. {sigh}

[oerin trubble]

there is a new email worm virus going around that everybody should be made aware of.
If you get an email with an attachment with a .pif extension DO NOT click on the attachment. Delete it immediately and update your virus software.

The w32.Netsky worm is the new virus on the block. It can mass mail itself from an infected system.

[Heartsong_Steelsoul]

If it makes you feel better, Denmom, you're probably not being targetted- from what I understand, it customizes itself.

[Speckocat Catnippurr]

I read the same thing. My cross-stitch group on yahoo got it too.

Nuisances....

[Ryessa]

I was about to post in the OOC forum but came and saw this..

as Heartsong said, this bug spoofs your OWN domain, so people need to look out for emails from their own provider / email service.

Of course, it never hurts to remind people that you don't do mass mailings

[ColdHeart]

At work we have been warned of a variety of new email virus.

Most of the new ones "spoof" alot of the info they have and will try and make you click on what attachement they have. DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHEMENT.

New versions with new ways of making you believe the email are coming out weekly it seems. To begin with it was a random "HI, for you" or "Yours" or "I await your reply" with said virus attachement. Now the message is getting longer and more believable.

First, if you receive a short email with attachement and are unsure who it is from or what the attachement is, delete it.
Next, if you receive an email saying youe email to Random@Adress.com was blocked, you did not send this email but the Virus did.

Nasty things and I receive a fair number at work. Take some advice from the X-Files, trust no one

[Aandaie]

The best thing to do is to use an email program/newsreader like Agent, which lets you configure WHICH file type extensions you will open at all.

For example, I configured mine to only recognize typical graphic files someone might send such as *.jpg, *.gif, etc, then open them in a third party program.
I turned off the recognizing of everything else, so
any *.html, *.pif, *.exe, *.scr, or whatever is never opened though I will see

blah.scr

in a box in the body of the letter. So I could choose to save it and execute it from an explorer folder, but in cases like that its always a virus. Pif is kind of an oldschool dos program executable shortcut, so someone should never be sending you something like that anyway. No one should be sending you *.exe files or any such files, if they have some program they want you to see which is legit and safe they should be instead just sending you a link to it. Many viruses are spread to the unwary when a real life friend sends you this cool dancing banana file, whee!!!(which was designed for exactly that happening.)

HTML as email has become an irritating trend lately, but most people still don't do it. My brother is new to the internet and sends emails as HTML, the goober, but all I do is use a filter to transfer his emails to a "safe" folder. He is not in an address book or anything like that, since address books are used by
virii to propigate (mostly in a program like Outlook), instead its just a simple "who" kill filter which saves a message from him and puts it in a folder.

Otherwise, I have a filter which sends anything with html in it to a "spam" folder, since 99.9 percent of them are spam anyway.

You should never be leaving it up to yourself as to whether or not you stumble on to a program which will execute and be a virus, make it so its not possible for you to do that even accidently.
If you do it right there really is no reason to have your email being scanned by a virus finding program, since its easier and better to simply make it so you can't execute a virus.

Outlook is the number one target of virus senders. They bank on the fact that you are using outlook AND you have gone to no lengths to safeguard files not executing. So the best thing to do is not to use Outlook at all, while the second best is simply to safeguard it so nothing can execute. I've yet to hear of a single virus which targets an email program like Agent or Pegasus. Pegasus is free and quite good.

I've also been getting a "false alarm" kind of scam lately. It mimics what the above posts are talking about, in making it seem like your computer sent an email somewhere which bounced. However, in reading it the thing which bounced was about viagra or something. As I said, I don't have the ability to even get virii emails and I'm not using outlook( nor any kind of address book), so it seems this new "undeliverable mail" thing is also a new way to spam which only makes the user think its an email which was sent from them.

[Ianthe]

Minor correction to Aandaie's thread:

.pif is an old window's (3.1) batch command file.

.bat is the old (and still viable) DOS command file.

.reg would another one to watch out for as it directly puts things into your windows registery.

In either case, if a friend is going to send you a file, they should zip it and tell you via some other way they are sending you a file. I personally delete any executables (or command files) I get because I have some friends who just haven't figured out the whole virus thing (even after multiple explanations).

[ColdHeart]

Even .zip files are not safe. From what I have been reading, any .xxx can be dangerous as the virus attachement. The file gets "masked" to look like something else.

Best thing if someone sends you an attachement you are unsure of is to reply and ask what the file is. Don't get a response? Delete it. Worse case is they can re-send you the file.

[Fluteria]

Definitely not just targeting the Traders Corner. I've gotten about 12 of these at work from our own domain. It's just a form that it inserts ServerDomainTitle.Com into a couple places. Bad part is, our virus warnings at work only go off on about half of these emails, not all of them, so there are probably some people that aren't checking half of them at work.

*hugs*