e-mail from William Litaker

Erv Niehaus · Post by **Erv Niehaus** » 18 Nov 2011 12:35 pm

I recently got an e-mail from William Litaker and it locked up my computer. I sent William an e-mail informing him of same but you might be careful opening an e-mail from him.
I had to call in a computer guy to have it removed from my computer. Ugh!

Erv Niehaus · Post by **Erv Niehaus** » 18 Nov 2011 2:00 pm

Now I'm getting a bunch of e-mails from Basil!

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 18 Nov 2011 9:36 pm

Hey Erv, and all steel buddies reading this do yourself a big favor. If you are not expecting an email from the particular person supposedly sending it to you just delete it or mark it as spam. Now if it is from a friend that you normally send emails back and forth then there isn't much you can do about it, but in the recent months I've received emails from folks I know here on the forum but have never emailed them or them to me I just delete it because it's no doubt a bot that has taken over their computer and using their email address book and sending big bad viruses from that list. So if you aren't best pals with the sender ask yourself why am I getting an email from this person

Good luck guys!

Big Bob

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 19 Nov 2011 7:22 am

I noticed that some Hotmail email accounts of my friends have been hacked, or phished, and are being used to send spam links for pharma or other nefarious items. There is nothing to stop the people who now control those accounts from also sending links to malware.

The accounts that were hacked were done so by using a dictionary attack to crack the passwords, after obtaining the user names. Any accounts that used weak passwords, commonly found in a dictionary, were taken over by spammers.

Hotmail resorts to locking down those accounts after receiving a couple of SpamCop reports about a given account. When the real owner tries to logon they are presented with a challenge and notice that their account was compromised. They must change their password and agree to new terms to continue to use thier Hotmail accounts. Other free email providers may employ similar protections.

Erv Niehaus · Post by **Erv Niehaus** » 19 Nov 2011 8:26 am

I normally don't open e-mails from unknowns but when the message contains "steel guitar" I just assume they are legitimate, wrong!

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 20 Nov 2011 11:19 pm

Sometimes I get emails from Forum members that they send to everyone in their address book. Lots of it is religious or political - things that I generally don't discuss in emails. Or it's a virus "warning" that is in fact a hoax.

I wish people would stop sending me things like that. I didn't ask to be put on anyone's mailing list.