Latest email threat/infection

Mike Labbe

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If you receive this in your email, be aware that the attachment IS a virus. This message, which appears to be from Microsoft is an infection. DON'T OPEN IT



FAKE MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

ATTENTION!

Antivirus vendors are warning of a new variant of the "Sober" virus discovered today that can delete the hard disk.

Protection:
Download and read the zipped patch. It's very easy to install!

Thanks for your cooperation!

--- (c)2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved
--- Microsoft Corporation
--- One Microsoft Way
--- Redmond, Washington 98052-6399
 
A while back, I got a very official-looking email from "Microsoft" informing me that the free MSN Communities (the place I host most of the photos I've posted on TG) was going to become a fee service. I don't remember if they advised me to send cash to a blind PO box in Clayton, NC or what, but I remember telling you all to expect those photos to disappear shortly.

The service is still free two years later.

I heard on the radio that Bill Gates was recently knighted by the Queen. He can't be addressed as Sir Bill 'cause he's not British but they are very pleased with his charitable works and his impact on the British economy.
 
I got this highly suspicious email about 2 weeks ago. You guys read it and see if you think it has any validity. I sure as heck don't!


Dear MSN Customer,
During one of our regular automatical verification procedures we've encountered a technical problem caused by the fact that we could not verify the information that you provided during registration.

We urgently ask you to submit your information so that we could fully verify your identity, otherwise an access to MSN services for your account will be deactivated until you pass verification process.

To submit your information please use our secure online application - update info.

Thank you for using our services, MSN Payment Processing Department.



That is it, reprinted verbatim. Spelling and grammatical errors included. The update info part was a link. Another strange thing is, when I tried to cut and paste it here, it showed up as one letter at a time on the left side of the window only. Also, when I printed it so I could post it here, every line of text had little dots under them. It didn't have any attachments, and I DID NOT use the link.

What does it look like to you guys? Keeping in mind that I've had the same bank draft account with MSN for YEARS!
 
I seriously doubt the legitimacy of that email. I'd forward it to them and ask


It sounds like someone "Phishing" for your credit card info, to me.

Mike
 
I also got an offical looking notice from what was supposed to be AOL's billing office informing me that my automatic payment supplier ( credit card ) have been refused. I had 24 hours to notify them or I'd be disconected. It then supplied a high lighted word to be put directly in touch with the billing office. I called them and found that none of this was true and they asked me to fwd the message to TOSreport. they said thay had received several similar complaints that day, and that the auto click could link you to a virus .

On a similar note my IT son was visiting and I told him of problems I was having with my laptop being too slow. He had to work on it for days and has finally dicovered 4 viruses despite a current version of Norton 2005. The problem was that my daughter had loaded norton 2003 and 2004 but had not completely and throughly UNINSTALLED them when installing 2005 which corrupted the 2005 and made the laptop vulnerable to Viruses despite haveing 2005 and segments of 2003-2004. It required him to mannually remove each folder of the Scans and then reinstall 2005. He insisted that multiple versions of scans could leave you with protection problems since they look at each other as viruses and they may disable features of each other.

It's Greek to me but it sure did cause major problems to my laptop and took my son DAYS to figure out and remedy even with all his trainning and experience.
BUDDY
 
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