Serious problem or harmless phishing?

[pounsfos]

i dont know what version of windows you are running
but open up your anti-virus (start, all programmes, *anti virus name here*
run a full scan

then find yourself the "run" box (usually start, run. *on windows xp )
then type %temp% into it. delete everything in that folder

doneburgers.

oh and dont do anything while it is scanning as it runs real slow and your computer lags like a mofo

if you dont have any anti virus grab yourself avg. its free and is amazing i use it on all my customers machines

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 - Reviews and free AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 downloads at Download.com

[bdesj]

Thanks, P!
Except I guess the method is different depending on the system and age- I should have included that information. Our home computer is Apple, 10.4.11
My wife borrows a friend`s laptop for wordprocessing duty from time to time, but I`m pretty sure the machine and connection at home is the only internet access she uses regularly.

EDIT: I`ll Google around when I get home- I`m sure that`ll turn up a way to do what you suggest.
Thanks again

[Arragonis]

You may find that after scanning, fixing, rescanning etc. that it continues. It may not be your PC. Some email style viruses use addresses in their inbox and pretend to be sent from that person or any other addresses in the inbox - so whilst the emails say they come from your wife they may be someone else she has emailed who has a PC which is infected. It can even use addresses from emails such as those CC'd into emails sent from the infected PC - jokes are a good method of spreading them around.

My wife gets emails like this often from customers who work in local government but it turns out to be a relative or friend of theirs who have an infected PC at home doing the emailing instead. Easy to prove as their work PCs are locked out pretty securely as they work with children in education departments.

For this reason (and the reduced risk of info being leaked when you sell or lose your PC) I recommend switching to a web-based system such as Yahoo or Google as they scan messages for threats and those 'body enhancing' messages you would rather not see. Hotmail seems a little 'leaky' with info, your experience may vary.

Be careful of letting some places like The Tech Guys or the local PC store have your PC to fix unless you know them well as you don't know what they will decide to make a 'backup' of without your knowledge - perhaps your PayPal account details or your internet banking, family photos or details of your holiday - so they know when to empty your house the address of which is probably nicely presented to them as well.

Assuming you are on Windows you can get free virus and malware removers quite easily - AVG free is a good virus package (takes some time to find the totally free one) and AdAware (make sure the latter comes from Lavasoft, there is a similar package which INSTALLS cr@pware instead of removing it...). Crapcleaner (honest) is good for removing anything not needed.

[Piwoslaw]

Here is a trick I learned from my Mom, and I use it under both Linux and Windows:
Make one account called 'Admin' or 'Root', and then an account for each user. The main account should have all the privileges, while the users' accounts should have as little as possible. ALWAYS log onto your user account, use it for browsing or any other work. NEVER use the main account, except for updating, installing, etc., after which you immediately log out of it. If you use only the user account without privieges, then it is much harder for malicious software or hackers to do anything to your computer.

Also, DO NOT leave your computer on if you are not using it. Standby is not enough - computers can sometimes be remotely turned back on or booted up. If you're going to sleep or to work, and your machine isn't busy resequencing DNA or looking for extraterrestrial radio signals, then turn it off and unplug it. A power strip which turns off your monitor, speakers, etc., at the same time is the best thing to use.

[cfg83]

bdesj -

Same thing happened to my sister's soccer-mom friend. Someone used her e-mail address and address book to send stuff to my sister and somehow it got to me. This friend got the virus and I was receiving e-mails that looked like copies of what she had actually sent in the past, except there was a nefarious *attachment*. It was either a Windows EXE that contained a virus or some other malware. I think it was also associated with a school district website, which are notorious for having viruses (the kiddies share colds and computer viruses alike).

Changing passwords and scanning for viruses is good, especially if you opened an attachment and/or a URL that was contained in the e-mail.

CarloSW2

[Cd]

My dads computer is having a similar problem.
I used SpyBot and it found some maulware, but it is unable to remove it.
I get this error
" Unexpected error in fixing problems ( Cannot create file "C : /WINDOWS/System 32/drivers/etc/hosts " access is denied .)
I went to the host file and tried to move it, but that didn't help anything.
I also tried three or four programs - AVG , Avira and a maulware remover, but all thee are not seeing the maulware that SpyBot sees.
Weird.

[cfg83]

Cd -

Originally Posted by Cd

My dads computer is having a similar problem.
I used SpyBot and it found some maulware, but it is unable to remove it.
I get this error
" Unexpected error in fixing problems ( Cannot create file "C : /WINDOWS/System 32/drivers/etc/hosts " access is denied .)
I went to the host file and tried to move it, but that didn't help anything.
I also tried three or four programs - AVG , Avira and a maulware remover, but all thee are not seeing the maulware that SpyBot sees.
Weird.

One of the things I do is I remove the hard disk and attach it as an external USB hard disk. Then I hammer it with an antivirus program on my "clean" PC.

This does NOT solve all virus problems, but it allows you to attack the hard disk without the possibility that the virus will be interfering with what you are doing. The limitation to this is that the antivirus software on your "clean" PC can't see registry stuff that is loaded when the OS is loaded. It is the files that are on the disk only. The other benefit is that you can use different antivirus software to analyze the disk. In practice you don't want McAfee and Norton and ??? running on the same PC because they fight with each other.

Assuming your Dad's PC is XP, your malware may have installed a copy in the "C:\System Volume Information" folder. This will allow it to reinstall itself ad-infinitum.

CarloSW2

[Cd]

Thanks for that clever idea !
I'll have to try it next time I'm there for a visit.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by trikkonceptz

Most of the time it turns out to be someone that has hacked your email address

No it's not.

Originally Posted by dcb

is she getting a lot of "undeliverable" returned messages? If so then her account was probably hacked.

Why would she ?
If spammers harvest your email address, they also use it to send out mails with.
Faking a sender email address is the easiest thing you can do.

Getting "undeliverable" returns in your inbox isn't proof your account was hacked, it merely means a mailserver is not filtering out the spam first.

You hardly get any such "undeliverable" mails anymore these days as admins have reconfigured their servers not to autoreply to spam anymore.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by bdesj

Thanks, P!
Except I guess the method is different depending on the system and age- I should have included that information. Our home computer is Apple, 10.4.11
My wife borrows a friend`s laptop for wordprocessing duty from time to time, but I`m pretty sure the machine and connection at home is the only internet access she uses regularly.

Don't go making any system changes or whatever because of this.
Changing a password every now and then is not a bad habit though.

Anyway, this is harmless, and it's just the way spamming works.
They simply need an email address to send from, and it so happened to be your wife's.
And they need a subject line to trick people into opening their rubbish.

There's 27 spam mails in my spam box right now.
One of them is sent abusing an address of mine.