[Northkeep] Weird mail and attachments

[Marc Carlson]

In the past few weeks, there has been a massive upswing in weird mail
issues, and since there are a number of people on this list who don't deal
with this all the time, I felt I should warn you.

1.  Update your virus protection.
2.  Run it.
3.  Do not open messages with attachments - even if they are from someone
you know and trust.  If you think it might be a valid attachment, contact
them and find out if they really sent you one.
While more traditional viruses will infect a computer and start using any
email system connected to it to send out infected email, there is at least
one virus out there right now that sends out email with fraudulent email
addresses in the "From:" line taken from the person's address book (Based on
the amount of complaint mail I've received about infected email apparently
coming from me, my TU account address is in a LOT of address books --
*mutter*).
    Unlike a lot of regular viruses, these can come up with randomly
generated, spurious, subject lines (although they frequently can sound
legitimate like "hey look at this", "you need to see this", and so on.
4.  Be paranoid for a while and be careful.

If you think you might get infected, back up relevant files (like documents,
pictures, and so on).  These viruses frequently will use those files to form
the body of the infected emails they send, and will overwrite the original
with unrecoverable garbage.

I know this sounds a little extreme and hoaxish - but it's a warning message
-- it's going to sound a little extreme :)

Just be careful.

Marc/Diarmaid




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