Microsoft Security Update

[Goober Mcfly]

At last count, since Friday, I have received about 300 emails urging me to update my Microsoft Software by running the attached file.

Okay, sure.

I know this is a virus, and my AV program catches each one, but I'm getting two new emails per hour!

For all you IS people out there, WHEN WILL IT STOP!?!?! Can I do anything besides deleting the emails?

*Note: I have a SPAM guard program that seems to be catching them all, but it still notifies me that I'm getting them. So, it's tolerable, at least...

Any way to trace the sender to find out which of my friends/associates has the virus?

 

[Goober Mcfly]

Ah! Buy a mac! Good advice.

This is at work, so I'm limited in that respect. I will contact my ISP, thanks CC.

Any other advice?

 

[chris123]

I got bombarded from last Thursday to Monday, I posted here about it. The attachment contains the 'swen' virus, a mass e-mail thing. Details on the microsoft web site.
These e-mails are NOT from Microsoft. DO NOT open the attachment. The e-mails will eventually stop and I don't think there's a way of totally blocking them. Just be diligent and empty your mail box, because it will get full!
According to my ISP they are not actually spam!

 

[chucklehead]

This is a real problem. Everyone needs two email addresses. One to use only for communicating with friends and families and one for other things (e.g. mailing lists, online purchases, etc...). That way once spammers get a hold of your email and render it useless, you just abandon it and open a new one.

Also, I highly recommend that everyone runs a personal firewall on their home pc, especially if you go to free porn sites (but who on terb would do that). I installed the free version of zone alarm on my pc about 6 months ago. It has blocked close to 300,000 attempts from the internet to access my pc.

 

[Alucard]

easy, don't use email. Email is old, use IM

 

[james t kirk]

Yeah, i have received a couple of these at work too.

Never even bothered to open them yet.

Delete time

 

[Alucard]

Its easy to get rid of the IM ones, I don't use icq anymore but for msn you can set it to don't recieve messages from people you don't know. and then no more spam ( I think you can do this with hotmail now too