The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #67551   Message #1128876
Posted By: GUEST,Arne Langsetmo
04-Mar-04 - 01:54 AM
Thread Name: Tech: peculiar email
Subject: RE: Tech: peculiar email
My AV (SymanteC) and Earthlink's input scanner didn't
flag it (claimed to come from support@netcom.com)

Not to worry, it had "Virus" written all over it
(ZIP file? No thanks). I reported it to Earthlink
abuse, and terminated it with extreme prejudice.

ANOTHER WARNING:

Similar e-mails have come from (purportedly) E-Bay
and Citibank recently, claiming some security issue
or account issue (I don't _have_ an E-Bay account;
dead giveaway) and asking me to click on a web link
and update my account information. These are not
viruses (or worms). Rather, they are spoofed URL
links that point to someone else's web site, and these
sites take the info (presumably credit card numbers and such)
and use it for identity theft. I'd note that if you
use the "make a link" stuff below, you'll see how this
works: The link text (what you see on the page) doesn't
have to look at all like the actual link referenced.
It may _say_ (in blue) "Please update your information at www.citibank.com/support" or
some such thing, but the actual link contained there is to
somewhere else. Make it a habit to look at the bottom
of your screen before clicking any suspicious links;
your browser (or some mailers even) will show the
actual link referenced at the bottom when your pointer
is on top of a link. If the real link doesn't look like
a proper address for what you're supposedly trying to
go address, DON'T CLICK IT! Be particularly suspicious
of IP addresses (those XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX type things);
legitimate businesses generally are using proper and
registered domains, and don't need IP addressing.

(Please note, though, that some people have legitimate
sites web-hosted by someone else, so that the URL may
look like it's for a different company than the company
whose page you're trying to view. If you have a question,
there are tools on the Internet to tell you who owns
a domain name or IP address ("Sam Spade" is onesuch site),
and these should help in determining if a site is legitimate.
Any lingering questions; go to the public web page of
the company you're trying to access, and see if they
have a "contact us" thing, and ask them if the e-mail
is legit (both Citibank and E-Bay have info on these
recent indentity-theft spoof sites).

HTH.

Cheers,

                            -- Arne Langsetmo