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Hi Troops:

I am running Windows XP with Norton anti virus. I just received an e-mail message purporting to be from my web service provider saying they are getting complaints of a lot of people getting spam from me. They say I should open the attachment and follow it's instructions. Is this a scam or has something gotten past my Norton?? Any advice will be appreciated.

Bill Shuey

Reply to
William H. Shuey
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"William H. Shuey" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@starpower.net:

Bill,

If it were me, I would contact your ISP about this e-mail, to confirm that they sent it. If you contact them by e-mail, use the e-mail address you get from their homepage, not a link on the e-mail they supposedly sent you. Any ISP with a clue will direct you to a web page with instructions, not send those instructions as an attachment.

This could be something similar to the fake e-bay e-mails that have been going around, or the ones from the 'IRS' the really aren't. In this case you are being asked to open an attachment that may do harm to your computer, or send your e-mail address or address book to a less than honorable third party (i.e a spammer).

Also, make sure you are current on your virus definitions and never, ever, open an attachment with .exe as a type, unless you really truly trust the source. Also, make sure your e-mail program is set up to invoke anti-virus on sending e-mails as well as when recieving them and opening attachments.

Hope this helps.

John S.

Reply to
John Stewart

Delete it and ignore it. An ISP will write the mail in plain text, which is what the internet mail standard is, after all. Even HTML, although it would be MIME-encoded, is automatically decoded by most modern mail reader programs, so there is NO GOOD REASON FOR ATTACHMENTS. If you really want to satisfy your curiosity, take the attachment to a Unix-type machine, run the "file" command on it and see what it says. If it's a Word or Excel document you can open it safely in OpenOffice, if it's an executable you'll know someone wanted to screw you over bigtime.

Good luck, mistrust is a GOOD thing these days.

Reply to
Gernot Hassenpflug

Gernot Hassenpflug wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb3.seikyou.ne.jp:

Dude, even if it's a Word or Excel document it could very well contain a macro virus.

NEVER!!! Did I say that loud enough? NEVER!!! open an attachment unless you specfically know the sender and that you have both discussed (by email or voice) that he is sending you a document.

Frank

Reply to
Gray Ghost

Bill,

I would not erase it until you forward the email to your service provider. Most all have an email address that begins with spoof@ and then finish with your providers address after that. For instance if your provider is comcast it would be forwarded to snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com

Reply to
Count DeMoney

danger! Danger! DANGER BILL ROBINSON! do not open, end to the abuse department at your isp. it's a sam to make your pc a server or get cc info.

Reply to
e

look in the coin groups for examples of many pjish schemes. collectors get a lot, especially fake ebay scams. erc.collecting.coins

Reply to
e

Bill Shuey

It's another version of the spoof which says "this is an autoresponder message and this email is undeliverable." with an email that pretends to be from you.

Death is too good for the [add own swear word here] who do this stuff!

Richard.

Reply to
Richard Brooks

A relative of mine used to say that paranoia is just a well developed sense of self preservation! :-)

Bill Shuey

Reply to
William H. Shuey

hate to tell you but norton and mcaffee both are not super reliable for verification. both give many false postitives. some of the smaller companys are much better. google up the relevant help.

Reply to
e

I hope some butthead isnt jacking around using Nortons name,this virus company is tight,they wouldn't get sloppy like that.Yea,an auto update from them should wipe off/out crud.

Reply to
teem

Gray> Dude, even if it's a Word or Excel document it could very Gray> well contain a macro virus.

Gray> NEVER!!! Did I say that loud enough? NEVER!!! open an Gray> attachment unless you specfically know the sender and that Gray> you have both discussed (by email or voice) that he is Gray> sending you a document.

Your advice is good, although not sufficient (what is, these days?) If you open a Miscrosoft document on a unix-type machine in OpenOffice or Abiword, any macro viruses are incapable of locating the Windows OS files they might be looking for. Most probably will not even be able to run. And if any damage is done, it will be much more limited than on a MS Windows system. The best is to use a text extractor which simply does not run any programs (macros) but simply shows you the text and contents. Any binary portions simply remain garbled characters. No possible damage. Abiword is like that, and I am sure OpenOffice can do that too. The only way you can be sure of the contents is by looking at them yourself.

Reply to
Gernot Hassenpflug

William> Gernot Hassenpflug wrote: >>

William> A relative of mine used to say that paranoia is just a William> well developed sense of self preservation! :-)

Commendable!

Reply to
Gernot Hassenpflug

ppp> I delete without opening the attachments to all suspicious ppp> email. If there is a genuine problem as described by you the ppp> sender will resend to you the same request several times. ppp> Over that week you would know by then from the grapevive ppp> whether this is a widespread problem, as in virus and spam ppp> alerts over the local news or on Internet gossip. The last ppp> step will be to phone your ISP.

Good ideas all. I've lost occasional mails from people, and only found out months later that they sent me something, but I always say, if it was so important, email is not the best medium, and certainly not the only one.

Reply to
Gernot Hassenpflug

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