Pamela's Page of Stuff

Virus Alert Message

(From Pamela.)

The main purpose of the virus\worm described below is to steal your personal and credit card information.

Note: As a good rule you should never open attachments from unknown individuals.

Mimail Virus Description

If you get an e-mail message warning you that your PayPal account is
about to expire, don't open it. If you open it, don't double-click the
attachment. If you double-click the attachment, don't complete the
form asking for your credit card information. And if you do fill in
the form, call your credit card company immediately.

And don't blame PayPal. The problem is an e-mail virus, Mimail.I,
first spotted on November 13. Most viruses are sick jokes; this one's
out to steal your money.

How It Works

Mimail (pronounced "my mail") arrives in an e-mail that appears to be
from PayPal. In very convincing language, it states that your account
will expire soon unless you resubmit your credit card information. "We
apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause," the text
politely reads.

The letter even appears concerned about your privacy: "Please do not
send your personal information through e-mail, as it will not be as
secure." Instead, it asks that you run the attached program. That's
where you enter your valuable information, which it then sends to four
different e-mail addresses.

It also scours your hard drive for new e-mail addresses to send the
same bogus message. These messages, like the one you got, are
"spoofed" to appear as if they came from PayPal.

(Editor's Note: The battle continues. This morning we received an e-mail from "Visa International" informing us that our Visa card was suspended due to security concerns. We were then to go to a website they sent us to reactivate our account. The problem was that this same message was sent to four different e-mails we use. An impossibility since only one account is registered with Visa.

Also, yesterday we received a message purportedly from the security department of our ISP saying we were sending out e-mails infected with a virus. We were then to go to a website that would help us. Another impossibility since we run a virus scan two times a week and update our virus definitions three times a week.

When we checked with our ISP, the message was another "spoof"

Be careful out on the information superhighway.