|  Welcome
to my hot flashes!
PayPal Scam
I didn't think these hot flashes
would come so often, but I thought this was important enough
to address here.
There is a virus/worm (W32.Mimail.H@mm)
circulating that could have serious consequences for those
who use "Pay Pal" on the Internet. The worm is structured
to steal credit card and bank information and have created
a fairly convincing screen to gather that information. The
attachment looks like a web page, but it isn't. It stores
your information and emails it to a number of fixed email
addresses. This will probably not last long as these addresses
will be tracked down, but this may take a few days. Also,
I am sure other variants will appear to take this one's place.
My advice to you is not to
open any mail titled, "YOUR PAYPAL.COM ACCOUNT EXPIRES".
The attachment will be titled "paypal.asp.scr" or
"www.paypal.com.scr". Be aware that this worm will
probably mutate over the next few months, so be wary of any
e-mails received regarding your Pay Pal account, in future.
If you do have concerns regarding your account, the best thing
to do is to check the real Pay Pal site and view your details
there.
A tip to checking an e-mails'
authenticity is to check spelling, grammar and syntax in the
body of the letter. If the spelling or grammar are incorrect,
rest assured, a big company did not send it. This particular
form has these errors in it.
To see more information go to the Symantec site:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.mimail.h@mm.html
Windows Tip:
Since I am ranting about security, here's
a tip that every single one of you should follow:
Go to the Windows update page and get all critical updates
for your operating system (Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP). Security
issues have been found concerning Internet Explorer and other
security issues from the past several months will be addressed
with these updates.
To get your updates, click Start…Programs….Windows
Update. Some of you may have this menu option in a different
place.
If you have never done this previously
and have a dial-up connection, be prepared for this to take
a while. You do need to make some time and get those updates.
15 November 2003
|
