Thursday, February 20, 2014

Voicemail via Email? No Way!


Here is yet another example of a scam I hear often about. This is a screen shot of what I saw in my email program:


At first glance a friendly, nicely formatted and really "professional" looking email.

Three things caught my attention before I would have clicked on "Listen";
  1. Red highlight: The sender address seems to come from "@pushworth.com". Big discrepancy to the supposes (company?) name "Whats App".
    In my mind the warning lights went on.
     
  2. Purple highlight: The sender disguised very well the actual route the email had taken. That shows technical know how and (criminal?) intent.
    By now the warning bells where ringing loud.
     
  3. Blue highlight: When I rested the mouse cursor on the pretty "Listen" button the link behind this button translated to "casinotipps.net".  Casino tips and forwarding voice mails via email? Oh Please, don't think I am that dumb. 
    Now I was already chuckling; just another scam email.
On top of all that I have never given neither the phone company nor the cell phone carrier any instructions to "forward voice mails by email"; what an abstruse idea.

But I know from experience that there are simple souls out there who did click on "Listen"; although the mail they had gotten likely looked different.

Actually I should be thanking the creator of this scam because he keeps me in the business of cleaning up virus infected computers.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
 



Tuesday, February 18, 2014

New Twist - Old Scam


Whether you ever would read The New York Times or whatever your political stance is,


      if you have a computer you NEED to read this NYT article.

The age old story of "User Beware" with a macabre twist.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
 

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Monday, February 10, 2014

eFax Scam - New Variant Of An Old Trick


Just this morning I got an email supposedly coming from eFax and I thought I better document it here.

Here are screen shots of what it looked like in Thunderbird, my email program.


The sender address seems to be efax.com (green frame). But resting the mouse cursor on the link supposedly representing the fax the translation of the name in the link, that is the place where a mouse click really would take me to, that translation clearly shows a web site in Brazil (red frame). Do you smell the rat?

Just for fun I rested the mouse cursor on the link for Help instructions and that really would take me to the efax.com help page (blue frames).


Although I personally know some people in Brazil. needless to say that I neither clicked on the first link nor did I download the compressed file (.zip) nor would I ever have opened this .zip file. My acquaintances in Brazil all have my email address.

As I always say, user beware.


As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
  

Thursday, February 6, 2014

NO to Office 2013, Office 365 and Microsoft Accounts in general


I stumbled over this article about lack of basic security features in Microsoft's cloud offerings.

I feel confirmed when I say
  • do not use a Microsoft account
  • do not use MS Office 2013 or MS Office 365
  • do not use Sky Drive (Microsoft's cloud storage option)
For everybody using Windows 8 that means they should cancel their Microsoft accounts and they should convert the account on the computer to a local account.

If you can't find out how to do that, you know who can help, right?

At least Office 2013 can be used without a Microsoft account; I don't know for sure about Office 365.

There are many cloud storage services that do not entail the usual "Microsoft risks" for lack of a better word.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
   

 

Saturday, February 1, 2014

2014 02 03 WTKM Talking Points (Feb 3rd 2014)


IMHO sensational: A working, usable office suite online!

Yahoo! Mail users urged to change passwords to something secure and unique (on Yahoo)

after security breach and theft of account login details!

Yahoo! serves virus infected Ads! No risk for my customers, they all have Adblock Plus!
I have said it thousands of times: Do not use Yahoo_anything.

SpyEye's creator arrested in Georgia. Worst banking trojan ever decapitated.

FileZilla FTP client versions 3.7.3 and 3.5.3 proven to be virus infected.

An epidemic of a new kind of malware; see:
       PuPs - No Virus But just as Nasty  and
       How Malware Gets Installed

Many more scam phone calls claiming computer infections.
Microsoft (and MS affiliates) do not know about us!
Do not let them work on your computer!
Do not give them any credit card information!

Intel will drop McAfee name and software sometime this year. Finally...

Many more scam emails claiming undeliverable packages, renewals of all sorts, product keys
et al.

Windows 8.1 IMHO only cosmetics. Pressure to create a Microsoft account much increased!

Neiman Marcus: 1.1 million cards stolen!
2,400 were abused quickly for fraudulent purchases.
POS terminals were virus infected!
Win XP? Your risk of virus infection is MUCH higher that of Win7/ 8 – for now.
Micro$oft will support Security Essentials on XP until July 14 2015!
Just shy of 30% PCs worldwide still on XP

Apple released major security updates. Who says Apple MACs are safe?

Please listen to WTKM on 104.9FM, Monday, Feb. 3rd 2014 from 10:00AM to 11:00AM.