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A word of caution

post #1 of 7
7/24/10 at 10:45am
Thread Starter 
Someone on this site has a virus, or there is a bot farming email addresses from here.
I have been getting phishing spam in my email with spoofed email return paths.
When I check the original message body, I get several with real return paths for catsite members.
The latest one was using Carolina's.

Please, run your virus and spyware scans.
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post #2 of 7
7/24/10 at 1:20pm
Whoa that's weird - my computer is protected 24x7... and clean as we speak... not from here... I wonder how this list is being generated; usually is from email lists, never seen in a forum!
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post #3 of 7
7/24/10 at 1:22pm
It almost always happens when someone gets a virus that goes in and collects all the e-mail addresses in that person's address book. It only takes one person, and it will look like everyone is e-mailing everyone else.
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post #4 of 7
7/24/10 at 1:27pm
you see that a lot with outlook or with MSN....... I use neither on this computer...
Arlyn how are the email addresses? username@TCS.com? something like that? or real emails?
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post #5 of 7
7/24/10 at 1:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrblanche View Post
It almost always happens when someone gets a virus that goes in and collects all the e-mail addresses in that person's address book. It only takes one person, and it will look like everyone is e-mailing everyone else.
One of the reasons I bought this new iMac I am typing on is because I thought it was more safe than PCs. But the success of Apple has caused these weird people that want to destroy other people's information, made them a target now as well. I may be paranoid but I never open attachments that have been forwarded. Even though I know the person because it is usually part of a long chain that has destroyed all in its path.
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post #6 of 7
7/24/10 at 3:37pm
Thread Starter 
These are not @TCS addresses.
The majority that I've gotten were hotmail, msn, and gmail.

This latest round is due to Blizzard's launch of Starcraft 2 and upcoming Warcraft expansion.
They are phishing for blizzard.net account info.

As I have an analretentive computer tech for a boyfriend, my computer gets scanned daily and reformatted every 2 months no viri here.

Carolina, I never thought it was from you, but chances are that the fake emails are created using names collected, either from a user with a virus, or, more likely, from a bot simply farming names from here, or possibly facebook.

I do not keep an address book on any of my email accounts, but I do use this particular email address for TCS, the Blizzard sites and Facebook, hence the tendancy to suspect a farming bot.
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post #7 of 7
7/27/10 at 3:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arlyn View Post
This latest round is due to Blizzard's launch of Starcraft 2 and upcoming Warcraft expansion.
They are phishing for blizzard.net account info.
You mean battle.net. It's usually Chinese and Russians doing this.

Do not rely on just anti-virus software. Only run yourself as a user and harden you OS (this takes work, but provides better protection than just relying on a anti-virus). Norton is useless, try something like NOD32. Regularly check your registry manually and keep it clean.

Carolina - Run a rootkit scanner and hijack this. The minute you think your computer is fine is when you'll get hit by something.
If someone gets something bad enough, reformatting and reinstalling the same OS won't work.


And no, Macs aren't bulletproof. If anyone believes that they're as naive as most windows users are.
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