Several months ago I devised a plan to keep SPAM out of my Inbox. As a part
of this plan, I had to create a 'special' email address just for my Yahoo
Groups. No email was sent from this address except to Yahoo Groups. This
email address has not been posted anywhere on the web except when an email
is posted to a Yahoo Group. Since I am a 'lurker' on most of my Groups, only
about 4 Groups are involved with me sending email.
Today I received one of the more famous types of emails that is a big scam,
a type of scam that has become known as
the Nigerian scam.
The email does have a new twist, but it is basically the same, starting out
like this:
My Dear Good Day,
PLEASE URGENT ATTN.
Do accept my sincere apologies if my mail does not meet your personal
ethics. I am Mr SULAMAN MUHAMMED The manager of bill and exchange at the
foreign remittance department of my Bank.
In my department I discovered an abandoned sum of US$8.5M, (Eight Million,
Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars) with account number 14-2558-5976 that
belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his wife and
only daughter in a plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight number 261 which
crashed on January 31, 2000. You shall read more about the crash on visiting
this site:
Then the email provided a link to a CNN site that listed the names of the
victims in the crash. The email went on to say how I could get some of this
money by following the senders instructions. Of course if I were foolish
enough to follow those instructions I would no doubt be left with no money
left in my bank account or be scammed out of money sent to the sender.
Now back to the purpose of this page. Someone on one of my lists is
either a scammer (I don't think this is the case, although I suppose it
could happen) or someone on one of my lists has a '
zombie'
computer. (This is much more likely!) If you are the Group member that has a
'zombie' computer, you may be wondering why your computer is a lot slower
than it used to be and have no idea that your computer has been taken over
by some nefarious scammer that has used your computer to send out this type
of scamming email to everyone in your address book.
This is what can and will happen to computer users that are not using
updated virus scanners and do not make sure they have no spyware by using
spyware scanners. Not only are these computer users not acting responsibly,
they are endangering themselves and everyone that has been added to their
address book. Some folks who control the '
bots'
that turn computers into 'zombies' have more evil motives than to send out
scamming email. Some of them will steal all of the controlled computer
owners financial data and steal the users Identities.
There is really no excuse for not using updated virus and spyware scanners.
There are numerous free products that can protect computers if the computer
owner cannot afford to purchase commercial programs.
I realize there are many computer owners who may be unaware of the dangers
of the Internet. However, the Yahoo Groups I belong to are all computer
related and there is really no excuse for the members of these Groups to be
unaware of the consequences of an unprotected computer.
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