SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
“Warning–Worst Virus Ever!”
“Bin Laden Hanged!–See Video!”
“Warn Your Friends!”
Have you ever had a friend or family member forward you a “warning” about a particular “scam” e-mail? Or a new virus?
And you look at the Cc, and see that they’ve also sent the e-mail to every friend and family member in their address book.
Next time this happens, don’t open it. Just delete it. And, maybe, send the helpful person in question a copy of this article.
You see, this is just a way for the scammers to gather valid e-mail addresses. (The message contains hidden ‘traps’ which they can follow.) Which they use to send you spam and more spam, and poisoned spam so they can control your machine.. And when they’re done, they sell the list of valid e-mail addresses to the next scammer/spammer.
Please. Stop the cycle. Don’t forward. Don’t open. Delete.
They’re easy to spot: they come from someone you know, and have “FW: URGENT” in the Subject line.
Don’t open attachments sent from unknown Senders (and be leery of ones from known).
Don’t click the link.
Simple one today… Just put the word “DON’T” at the beginning of the title.
Today’s free link: Greetings! – Another Email Banking Scam Another well-written “e-mail scam” advice article from my friend Bill Mullins.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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Tech - for Everyone 
Hey Paul,
Absolutely tip-top advice.
If we all paid more attention to this sort of advice, it would go a long way towards having an impact on these cyber-crooks.
Bill Mullins
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[…] one way these cyber-crooks obtain your email address in the first place. Read SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW! by […]
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hm, thx for the heads up, i always ignored and deleted those mails with subjects as you won the lottery or collect your 50.000.000 $ price now….pretty stupid they still try those things
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coration–
Good policy for all kinds of unsolicited e-mail.
But just to be clear, here I’m talking about those “chain letters” that claim to be warnings… and some well-meaning relative (or friend) forwards it. We have a tendency to have a higher “trust” when the Sender is someone we know.
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This is posted on my facebook page. Is it true? Can you fien out if its real or not?
ATTENTION !!!!!!!!!! IF YOU RECEIVED A MESSAGE FROM A FRIEND WITH THE OLYMPIC TORCH, TURN OFF THE COMPUTER BECAUSE THE OLYMPIC TORCH ‘contains one of the most POWERFUL VIRUSES’ EVER BEEN DISCOVERED THAT IS ABLE TO BURN YOUR hard drive. There was also a warning for this from CNN so be careful. Please copy and repost!
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Papa Dave,
While I do not personally know of what you reference, I can tell you this:
1) You should always be extremely leery of “messages”, even when they say the come from your friends. Often, one of the first things a “virus” does is e-mail a copy of itself to everyone on any contact list it discovers.. and “spoofing” the name in the Sender field is childsplay.
2) You should make efforts to prevent “active content” from running on your machines.. I have written many how to’s on that topic.
3) The ability of malware (such as a virus) to render your hard drive inaccessible, erase it, encrypt it (hold it hostage) and other nasty things, has been around for roughly 30 years now…
You should always follow proper preventive methods (such as applying Updates, and running an antivirus) AND you should make regular backups of your data and keep them someplace other than your hard drive.. I’ve written that several dozen times as well…
Please see, Got A Computer? Top 10 Things You Should Do*
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Thanks Paul
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MikeyK,
The key here, I think, is to send the article to the FW: – er. I know their heart is in the right place, and they think they are doing some kind of service…
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