have just received email from FBI

C

cappamj

Registered User
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stating that my IP has been logged on 30 illegial web sites, the email states I have to answer the questioneer but I can not open attachment. It was sent to my eircom address but had [I]RemovedbyRainyDayForSecurityReasons[/I]@eircom.net instead of my name what should I do -- I am a grandmother and the only sites I visit are property, holiday or money sites.
 
DO NOT click the attachment under any circumstances. It is a virus which will infect your PC. They are attempting to scare you into taking action.

FBI don't process investigations by email.
 
Let me guess -- was it from Steven Allison?
It's a fake email. It's not from the FBI.

I would say ignore it, except you mention you looked at the attachment. What happened when you tried to "open" the attachment? You may have infected your machine with a virus or spyware.
 
I have recently been receiving e-mails not addressed to me in my Vodafone account. I use the 'flag as junk mail and forward to administrator option' but it won't let me forward it to the administrator.
 
yes it was from Steven Allinson, attachment would not open as I do not have the correct file/wizard? I do not know a lot about cmputers and normally do not open attachments but this one looked real
 
The guys who send these out are very good at social engineering. Dont feel too bad about it if you did try to open it, but in future do not open attachments from people you do not know, no matter how authentic it looks.
 
cappmj - to be clear, do not try to do anything with this mail other than delete it. You say you have already tried to open it which I reckon is bad news - unless these guys are particularly dumb they will not have sent out something that doesn't work - the error message you saw was more than likely a smoke screen which attempted to confuse by reporting that it hadn't worked when in fact it had.

I suggest getting hold of someone technically competent and getting them to make sure your machine is clean, possibly using the tools linked in the sticky topic in the IT thread.

z
 
car said:
but in future do not open attachments from people you do not know, no matter how authentic it looks.
Click to expand...
And treat attachments from those you know with caution too, unless you are expecting them. The ILoveYou & Melissa viruses were transmitted by email attachments from someone who had your address in their address book, i.e. someone you know.
 
I've got a good couple of hundred spams today (normally I only get about 20), so maybe something is out there.

(cappamj - I'd be about 90% sure you've infected your PC.)
 
Just received one from eircom(purprtedly). Says a lot of spam has been sent from my address over the last 5 days and that if I don't deal with it they will have no option but to cancel my account. there is an attachment but I just deleted the lot on the presumption it is a virus. boy but my computer has been in a mess over the last 5 days and I don't doubt it was well capable of generating the spam concerned. Even though it is now reading clean i somehow have lost a lot of faith in the machines security.
 
You should check with eircom if this email is genuine and not itself a spam. Then ask them when the spams were sent from your address. Perhaps it dates back to before you recently cleaned up your PC?
 
This is a fairly common approach to virus infection. You were right to delete it.
 
thank you everyone, I will be more careful in future, I ran norton anti virus but it is not showing up anything, will get the neighbours young son to check it at weekend he is a whiz with computers.
 
cappamj said:
thank you everyone, I will be more careful in future, I ran norton anti virus but it is not showing up anything,
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Not all spams contain viruses. They could contain other nefarious programs (e.g. adware, spyware, parasites etc.) or scripts or nothing at all.
 
Various web sites today are reporting a new variant on the SOBIG virus with the latest strain having a .AG appendage, and being attached to an FBI email of the type descriped in first post. This is a very destructive animal and corrupts pc if the attachment opened.
Be warned!
 
In relation to the original post - see [broken link removed] and this associated [broken link removed] on the FBI website.
 
cappamj said:
thank you everyone, I will be more careful in future, I ran norton anti virus but it is not showing up anything, will get the neighbours young son to check it at weekend he is a whiz with computers.
Click to expand...
I suspect you may not have updated your virus definitions file before running the check, and in any case if you have the virus (which sounds very likely here) it may prevent you antivirus software working properly. The self-contained 'stinger' tool found here [broken link removed] may help you to clean the virus.
 
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