Re: from Tara to all ..

[Guest guest]

Eyre wrote:

> The only totally effective remedy I can think of is to take 3 steps:

>

> 1. Explain to all your contacts the pattern of the e-mails they're

> likely to receive and warn them never to open those weblinks

>

> 2. Flush your computer out with a good up-to-date anti-virus

> programme to remove any virus that's still resident there

>

> 3. Temporarily abandon your compromised e-mail address and

> advise all your contacts to block it for a few months.

>

4. Dump Windows. For the most part, Mac and Linux users don't face

these problems.

BTW, great explanation about how the virus impacts accounts.

Best,

~CJ

[Guest guest]

Tara, Helen, & All,

Not sure if it will give you much comfort to know that that virus

you caught, Tara, is a common one that's circulating widely at the

moment. A couple of my acquaintances have been sending out the same

sort of messages as yours to all their contacts (including me) for the

last montb or more, and there's nothing we've been able to do to stop

them.

Unfortunately, sorry to say, it's not your password that's been

compromised, so changing that isn't going to help. The original

infection would have occurred when you received one of those e-mails

similar to the ones that are now purporting to come from you, and you

innocently visited the website it referred to.

That website then lodges the virus in your computer and the virus

collects your contacts from your address book and next time you're

on-line it secretly calls home and sends all those contacts to its

nefarious host.

From that point on, there's nothing you can do because the host then

sends out more of those e-mails to all your contacts using your name and

your e-mail address from its own server. Naturally your contacts fall

for it because they think it's you sending them an interesting web link.

I'm not sure if the host will ever stop sending those emails out to your

contacts. I've been getting them from one of my contacts for over 4

months now and we don't know how to stop them. They come at irregular

intervals, maybe 2 or 3 weeks in between, whenever the host happens to

decide to do another run using your name and address.

The only totally effective remedy I can think of is to take 3 steps:

1. Explain to all your contacts the pattern of the e-mails they're

likely to receive and warn them never to open those weblinks

2. Flush your computer out with a good up-to-date anti-virus

programme to remove any virus that's still resident there

3. Temporarily abandon your compromised e-mail address and

advise all your contacts to block it for a few months.

In this case, since one of your contacts is the Aspires list, it's

very important now that everyone on the list understands this hazard,

and if any of you succumbed to curiousity and opened a link purporting

to come from Tara, you'd probably better go through my steps 1-2-3

yourself. On the other hand if you only opened Tara's e-mail and

didn't click on the weblink, you should be safe. Also anyone with an

operating system other than Windows probably wouldn't be infected either.

Horrible, isn't it!

Never mind! Don't feel guilty! Just spread the word to all your

contact victims so that they can be fully aware and take the steps to

neutralise this hazard as well.

------

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 at 19:05:11 -0000 Tara wrote via Helen:

> Hello Helen,

>

> Isn't that something? I just changed my password on the weekend because I was

having issues in downloading emails from my incredimaill.

>

> What I already did was delete all of my contacts from this email address so

that in the future nobody can ever go through my contact list and email people

SPAM.

>

> Would you mind passing this email communication to the list and let them know

how sorry I am. The spammer emailed all of my contacts - my family and other

people as well so I am really upset about this.

>

>

> Thanks again,

>

> have a great day,

>

> best wishes,

>

> Tara Kimberley Torme