Yesterday, I received a very cunning, virus-causing email that almost beat me. As the CEO of InBoxer, a company that sells anti-spam and email archiving products, I am pretty clever about spotting these things. But, this email jolted me and almost fooled me.
FROM: Federal Trade Commission [frauddep@ftc.gov]
SUBJ: Complaint Update for Roger Matus (Case id : #6263)
Gulp. It got my attention. What made the email cunning is that it contained specifics. It named a customer and a date of the complaint, which made me want to rush to our ordering system and see what happened. It even had a specific form-like area:
Complaint was filled against :
Name : Roger Matus
Company : - InBoxer
I almost clicked on the link, which said: http://ftc.gov/fraud/complaints/24_oct_2007_george_hanson.doc
Then, my mental alarm bells went off. A word document from the government? I placed my mouse over the link and waited for the tool-tip box to appear. (In case you don't know, if you hover your mouse pointer over any link, it will show you the true destination.) The little yellow box appeared and showed a site named babywieberg. Mischief found!
"Simply opening the e-mail does not appear to cause harm," said the FTC. "However, it is likely that anyone who has opened the e-mail's attachment or clicked on the links has downloaded the virus on their computer, and should run an anti-virus program. The virus appears to install a 'key logger' that could potentially grab passwords and account numbers."
BE CAREFUL! If you got one of these emails, (1) run a virus scan, (2) forward the message with the headers to
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