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Thursday, January 27, 2011
Spam Scam
Wow, look at this e-mail I found in my Inbox this morning. It got through Google's spam filter and Outlook's junk mail filters. It sure looks simple, to the point, and legitimate, but NEVER EVER reply to something like this. No company will EVER ask you to send this level of information, nor would they ask it of you over the phone.
NEVER SHARE YOUR ACCOUNT INFORMATION WITH ANYONE!
"From: Amazon.com [mailto:amazone@live.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:18 AM
Subject: Amazon Alert
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 12:18 AM
Subject: Amazon Alert
Dear Amazon Customer,
Kindly note that we are carrying out a routine check up on
all our account holders. This process is vital. For your account to be verified,
Kindly reply to this email by providing your Account Email, Account password,
Account Debit/Credit Card details and Card Security number (cvv).
Tracy Colemann
Customer Care Manager"
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Kaspersky: Fake Antivirus Scareware on the Rise
From Maximum PC:
"Fake antivirus software masquerading around as the real deal is quickly becoming one of the oldest (and most used) tricks in the malware manual, and for good reason. It's easy to dupe less savvy computer users, especially as these bogus programs have become adept at looking the part. The latest one making the rounds is a false AV scanner called Antivirus 8.
"Over the last few days, we received numerous reports of computers infected with fake antivirus (scareware)," Roel Schouwenberg, senior antivirus research for Kaspersky, wrote in a blog post. "The name of this particular culprit is Antivirus 8."
According to Schouwenberg, fake pop-ups related to the bogus application were appearing on users' systems while not actively using their PC. Instead, they were running as soon as ICQ began fetching/displaying new ads. As Schouwenberg explains it, malware writers went through the trouble of setting up servers that appear to be related to actual retail products, so to outsiders (like Kaspersky) looking in, it appears the 'store' was simply the victim of an attack and the dirty ads keep rolling.
"By making it look like their server got compromised, the criminals can claim it isn't them who's responsible for distributing the malware," Schouwenberg explains. "But rather someone else who hacked their server to spread malware. The ad distributor is very likely to simply give them a warning, which gives these criminals at least one more shot at infecting more machines."
How it works isn't really important here, as none of this is going to matter to inexperienced users in the first place. Instead, now might be a good time to remind family and friends -- the ones who seem to ring your number every couple weeks with a new computer problem -- not to fall for fake AV scams.
"
"Fake antivirus software masquerading around as the real deal is quickly becoming one of the oldest (and most used) tricks in the malware manual, and for good reason. It's easy to dupe less savvy computer users, especially as these bogus programs have become adept at looking the part. The latest one making the rounds is a false AV scanner called Antivirus 8.
"Over the last few days, we received numerous reports of computers infected with fake antivirus (scareware)," Roel Schouwenberg, senior antivirus research for Kaspersky, wrote in a blog post. "The name of this particular culprit is Antivirus 8."
According to Schouwenberg, fake pop-ups related to the bogus application were appearing on users' systems while not actively using their PC. Instead, they were running as soon as ICQ began fetching/displaying new ads. As Schouwenberg explains it, malware writers went through the trouble of setting up servers that appear to be related to actual retail products, so to outsiders (like Kaspersky) looking in, it appears the 'store' was simply the victim of an attack and the dirty ads keep rolling.
"By making it look like their server got compromised, the criminals can claim it isn't them who's responsible for distributing the malware," Schouwenberg explains. "But rather someone else who hacked their server to spread malware. The ad distributor is very likely to simply give them a warning, which gives these criminals at least one more shot at infecting more machines."
How it works isn't really important here, as none of this is going to matter to inexperienced users in the first place. Instead, now might be a good time to remind family and friends -- the ones who seem to ring your number every couple weeks with a new computer problem -- not to fall for fake AV scams.
"Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Are AOL Subscribers Dense?
Okay, that post title is not mine, even though many of you know that I have nagged enough of you about this. How or why anyone could still be paying AOL the monthly subscription rate is beyond me. Okay, I do realize that there are still some of you who are dial-up and maybe have no other option (still hard to believe), but read the dollar figures and look at the percentages in this Maximum PC article posted at their site today. I also don't understand why anyone would use AOL at all, subscription or not, but that's just me.
"First and foremost, you might be surprised to learn that people still subscribe to AOL, the once popular ISP that fell from relevance about the time broadband came into its own. But get this -- according to The New Yorker, some 80 percent of AOL profits still come from its subscription business. It gets even better.
The New Yorker describes these subscribers as "older people who have cable or DSL service but don't realize that they need not pay an additional $25 a month to get online and check their email."
We're not talking about a small fraction of users, either. BusinessInsider said it spoke with a former AOL exec who said that AOL's "dirty little secret" is "that 75 percent of the people subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it." When you consider that AOL raked in $244 million from 4 million customers in the third quarter of 2010, you can see where this could be troubling."
"First and foremost, you might be surprised to learn that people still subscribe to AOL, the once popular ISP that fell from relevance about the time broadband came into its own. But get this -- according to The New Yorker, some 80 percent of AOL profits still come from its subscription business. It gets even better.
The New Yorker describes these subscribers as "older people who have cable or DSL service but don't realize that they need not pay an additional $25 a month to get online and check their email."
We're not talking about a small fraction of users, either. BusinessInsider said it spoke with a former AOL exec who said that AOL's "dirty little secret" is "that 75 percent of the people subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it." When you consider that AOL raked in $244 million from 4 million customers in the third quarter of 2010, you can see where this could be troubling."
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