Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 11:42:32 02/26/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 26, 2004 at 14:08:49, martin fierz wrote: >On February 26, 2004 at 14:01:25, Stephen Ham wrote: > >>Dear John, >> >>I just received the following email, with attachment, from John Merlino. Since >>you're the only John Merlino whom I know, I thought I'd better post this to you. >> >> >> >>Thanks for your registration. >>( We say Sorry again, the first mail was delivered to an unknown mail address. >>This was a bug in our mailing system! ) >> >>The amount of 239.- USD was deducted by your credit card. >> >>Welcome, >>you can now visit more than 1200 very very hot web pages! >>Your registration, pages and passwords are in the attachment. >> >>enjoy >> >> >>His email address is: John.Merlino@smtp02.fields.gol.com and he sent this to my >>work address, which is odd. That John Merlino didn't leave a name after writing >>"enjoy." >> >>I don't recall trying to register anywhere and I certainly don't recall >>authorizing any debit to my credit card for $239. The mention of "hot web pages" >>sounds like porno. You're not in that business now, are you, John? ;-) Since >>there's an attachment, this looks like a virus/worm. >> >>I'm guessing that it's a mere coincidence that the sender's name is the same as >>yours. I plan to delete the email after you confirm that you didn't send it. >> >>Thanks in advance, John. >> >>All the very best, >>Stephen Ham > > >hi stephen, > >time to learn a bit about computer viruses for you :-) >whenever you get email like this and it sounds wrong, type some of the exact >words in the mail into google. for instance, i googled this: > >"The amount of 239.- USD was deducted by your credit card." > >and found http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/sober_c.shtml (and many others). read >it! > >cheers > martin Dear Martin, Thank you very much! That was quite informative. My primary reason for posting was to let John know that he may have a virus/worm/trojan in his computer. Secondarily it was to tip others off about this, who may have received the same email. Thanks again for the education, Martin! I confess that I never thought of Gooling the text of the messaage. All the best, Stephen
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.