Phil Harrison

In the last couple of days I've had:
1) a 'new' address put into my OE Address book, and
2) An automatic gateway rejection of an E-Mail I hadn't sent to a person I don't know.
3) I'm starting to get spam which is evading the ISP filter.

And this followed immediately upon an auto-update of my McAfee.

I have run a full check with my up-to-date McAfee (Checker & Firewall) and with Ad-Aware - Zilch.

Looks like virus/trojan activity.... but undetected. Ideas anyone?

(??Possibility?? of 'phishing' through what appeared to be a standard contact-circle updater received from a known contact??)

Comments anyone??

TIA

Phil

JackClark

Doesn't sound viral to me.

comic cuts

Hi Phil,


Good to see you back, hope you had a great summer!

I had same problem and have now installed Spybot (it's free!) instead of Adaware. I think it's better, may be worth a shot. My laptop now runs quicker!

Regards,

??

SJ_Skyline

2) An automatic gateway rejection of an E-Mail I hadn't sent to a person I don't know.


I was getting loads of these at one point, I think it is caused by the last batch of morphing viruses that spoof the senders email address. It works thus:

Someone else that has your email address in their address book gets infected and starts sending virus infected email to all and sundry, the sender record in the email address is spoofed as any one of the email addresses that appear in said address book.

Bottom line is that you are probably clean with regards to this issue but someone that has your email address in their address book is infected.

AFAIK ISPs are wising up to these emails and many are blocking them.

If anyone knows better then please correct me!

SJ_Skyline

3) I'm starting to get spam which is evading the ISP filter.

Your ISP filter probably is filtering things with titles like "Free Software", the spammers are gettuing around this by titling mail like "Fr33 S0ftwar3" or "Fr.ee Soft_ware" absolute pain in the rear it is too!

There was a report on BBC a few weeks ago about a downturn in the amount of spam due to the effect of the recent hurricanes on Florida - oddly enough, they reckoned that a large portion of spam originates from Florida! I guess as time goes by and these people get back on line spam will increase again

Phil Harrison

Thanks guys. I think this "Address book update" mailing I got is the culprit, because one of the the people whose address book was allegedly being updated only has Cable-TV E-mail rather than OE or some other client on a PC. The unfiltered spam has absolutely normal Subject lines. I'll give Spybot a whirl, but you'd expect McAfee and Ad-aware to knock it down between them! Any thoughts on the insertion of an unknown E-Mail address into my OE address-book anyone??

Cheers

Phil

Comic Cuts.....you have me scratching my head!

Chris L

Incidently - use both Adaware and Spybot. Both very good programs, but I've found that on many occassions, each program will pick up things the other has missed. Neither is 100% full proof, so just use both as they are free! Make sure you have v1.3 of Spybot and v1.05 of Adaware SE.

To be totally clean, you can always check your PC with Webroot's Spysweeper. Also, download Crap Cleaner - another outstanding free utility. Using a background spyware monitor such as Spyware Guard is also a good idea.

Chris

Phil Harrison

Thanks, Chris

Would it be right to say that if I've been 'phished' using the address book updater, then it doesn't necessarily follow that I've now got a Trojan, (and hence that there may, indeed, be nothing for the utilities that I have got to find)?

Phil