.

Yesterday I got an email entitled "Notice to Appear.' It looked like a subpoena or a summons or something. I was pretty startled and tried to open it. Fortunately my email program caught and refused to open it as it was an executable.

A little googling revealed what I saw fit the description of a newly-prevalent phishing scam.

Real courts don't use email notification...


--Mac

Right you will get it "hand" served.

Good luck, I'll bring you a cake with a file just in case!

Later,

I had one this morning from "Bank Of America". It was something like "update your account". I don't even have an account with them.

Watch out for that one too!

LLOYD S

Another favorite: PayPal... beware.

Be very careful with the emails about a missed package delivery.

Clicking on the attached link loads a crypto-locker. It immediately installs and encrypts EVERY FILE on your computer. A window pops up with a timer which starts counting down. A notice tells you that when the timer hits zero, all files will be deleted from the computer and wiped clean... unless you pay the ransom you loose ALL your data. There is no "fix" to this other than to pay up or lose the data. Period! You are screwed. The encryption is 128bit and there is not enough time to even attempt to unscramble it.... pay up or lose your entire computer's data. Resetting the clock doesn't work it actually jumps the timer down by several hours as punishment for thinking you could outwit them so easily....and I think it's either 24 or 48 hrs max.

The ransom is a couple hundred bucks and must be paid in the untraceable bit coin format.

This is one seriously bad situation to be in so be careful. It didn't happen to me or anyone I know yet although there are stories on the net and it supposedly happened to a police station in Florida and encrypted all their servers.

Be very careful what you click on. If UPS or FEDEX delivers to you already, the email is a scam.

Other things to be aware of: Banks, delivery services, pay pal, cell phone services, ebay, etc..... none of them send emails of this nature.

I got an email from my "supposed" cell carrier about a bill that was $1800 for the previous month..... seeing that generally causes a panic in most folks. Resist the temptation to click the link. Log on to your account OR BETTER YET, CALL them on the phone to check the info. Banks want the email forwarded to their security dept.

Let me tell you a story that happened to me. I received an e-mail from what looked like our corporate office at work. The e-mail came in a very similar format to the ones that are actually from the company, "name@companyname.com" the e-mail contained a form and the message that as we approach the new year, we need to update some information, and that everyone who drives their own vehicle, needed to have this form on file for tax purposes so as to get reimbursed for our truck allowance each month. Once we completed the form we could just sign a new copy each year, and corp would keep it on file. simple and easy right!

Wrong, oh so stinking wrong!!! It was not from corporate, but the form was a hidden .exe file that began to attack the file on the computer, and corrupt them in alphabetic order from A to Z!!

Then real problem was it did not act like anything was happening, the form just sat there on the desktop, and when i tried to open it, it said the file format was corrupt. As i was about to send an reply asking for a usable file, i happened to notice that all three of my cloud services were syncing at the same time, skydrive, google and dropbox. Yes i keep redundant copies in three different location for all my bids and proposals. Sure call me anal, but hey i am.

So i open up one of them and notice that the files are changing names, so i immediately tried to open my virus software and attack back, being the proactive beasty i am. To no avail. I them began to disconnect all three cloud services from the computer to break the link, by the time i got this to work, i had lost all files from A to H just that fast. I tried everything to restore them, i tried everything to find the virus, nothing worked it attacked the very heart of my computer safe mode was in effective. Geeeeeeeeez i get mad still thinking about it. About 10 minutes after it happened i get an e-mail from corporate warning that this was not from them, great, the IT guy is on vacation, and it is thursday, so i am screwed till tuesday next week. It required a complete install of the OS, a complete re-install of all software, and a complete melt down on my part.

Now here is the good part! i learnt sumpin' very valuable from this!!!

If you get a virus like this ever on your system and it begins to attack-ak-ak-ak. The first thing to do is reach down and press the hard shut down button on the computer, open in safe mode and do a system restore to a time prior to the virus attack, it only has to be a short time. Then if you have cloud services most of them also have restores, just invoke a restore to the day before, and everything would have been saved. Skydrive for instance has a 72 hour look back feature that allows you to restore within that window. Well guess what i was just outside that by tuesday mid day when i got the it guy on the phone and he told me all this.


Arrrrgggggg! O well so far i have survived it, every once in a while someone calls in and says lets do that job you quoted me on, and i have no record of it, and have to sneak by and re do the take off!!!

That's one of the reasons I keep a Linux Live CD handy. You can boot from it and see the files on your system without re-activating any malware.

Still, having backups is always the best option. I keep reminding myself that, then kick myself when my computer fails and I haven't followed my own advice.

brotha, ain't that the truth!

The solution is simple; you've all heard it a hundred times:

Never, never, never, NEVER click on a link in an email!

Period.

I have no sympathy for anyone who gets bitten after failing to follow this common-sense rule.

Jon

If unsure, here's a good site that tracks spam attacks techhelplist.com

That "Notice to Appear" contains a kitchen sink of malware...I got one this morning in my junk folder, Microsoft Hotmail does a pretty good job of tracking spam attacks.