I received a hoax e-mail this morning and it got me thinking that other Trains.com users may also be receiving this type of e-mail and assuming it’s a legitimate e-mail from Trains.com, when it’s not. Here’s how it looks:
E-mail text: To safeguard your email account from possible termination, Please follow the instructions in the attached file.
Attachment name: email-doc.zip
Two things: First, this e-mail isn’t legitimate, and we did not send it. Hopefully, it’s simply targeting other e-mail addresses with the extension @trains.com. Second, I’m currious to know if any of you receive similar e-mails like this from an admin@trains.com e-mail account (which, by the way, I don’t believe even exists). Please let me know if you have.
Must be some scam going around because I received the exact same type of message at my personal e-mail but from admin@thebrantfamily.com - a domain I own!!. Don’t know how people are doing it but it does seem to be some type of scam.
Also, I didn’t open/unzip the attached file when I got the e-mail. I urge anyone else who may have received this type of scam: DO NOT OPEN THE E-MAIL as this is a way for virus to be spread and delete it immediately!!!
Although it’s not exactly the same e-mail sent to you, I received one that is on the same principal. Hopefully nobody gets taken by it.
The biggies I keep getting are from the admins at E-bay and PayPall telling me that an unauthorized attempt was made to access my account, and that i need to update my account info immediately, or risk having my account suspended PERMANANTLY!!
Horror of horrors! I’ve never had an account either place…[:O]
That’s why they call them “phish scams”…they bait the hook and see what bites
Probably not all that different from the e-viruses and e-worms that are spread around “using” normal e-mail addresses. I know I’ve had my e-addy “harvested” for this use 'cuz some of the e-virus messages have bounced back to me! [:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!][:(!] Yahoo has been pretty good as far as blocking most of the bad stuff/spam/other e-crapola that is being passed on to me, although I can still catch 'em when they let one slip thru!
Of course, it’s always gotta be some knob that ruins the fun for the rest of us! [:(!][:(!][banghead][soapbox][soapbox][tdn][tdn] [sigh]
Ingenious buggers, aren’t they? This looks like a variant of one of the phishing scams – there is one wandering around now and then on att.net.
If you don’t know the sender… use caution. Never give out account or personal information to one of these sites. And as Brian says – never open – or if possible even click on (even once) the attachments!
And if you’re going to send something to me unannounced (and you’re not one of my usual correspondents), be sure to have a subject that makes sense. I just deleted a “no subject found” message. The obvious stuff gets deleted immediately. The other stuff I think about for a moment before deleting…
Thanks for the heads up Bergie! At present, we have a really good
firewall installed. But we’ll keep on the lookout, anyway. We changed
browsers earlier in the year, and don’t get as much of that cr** anymore,
but always better to be safe than sorry.
If my email doesn’t recognise the adress as a one I have deemed safe, it puts it in the spam folder and thne i can either report it, delete it, or save it. Havent ogtten anything like that at all, wll let you know if I do. BTW, everyone Im using Gmail and if you want an account email me at miniwyo@gmail.com and i will send you an invite!
[:(!]I have not received this message, but I did receive something else at work with a .zip attachment. My employer’s firewall detects and blocks all emails with .zip attachments, as they have advised us that these are “high risk” for potential viruses.
I must have gotten over a dozen of these in one months time or another.
I accadently opened one up at one time and thank God that Yahoo has virus protection or I would be in a world of hurt right about now. The Question I have is? Why are there so many viruses? And what are they trying to acomplish by spreading these deadly viruses over the internet?
Alan, apparently it must be FUN. I can see no other reason. And with summer here and everybody home from school and bored it’ll probably get worse for awhile. ( am I targeting a specific age group? Nah, just getting old and cranky) Maybe if they got involved in MR they wouldn’t have time to sit around and think up this stuff. Case in point, look at Tuesdays newswire about the BNSF train in NM. The ONLY part of the story I found humor in was the town in which it happened. Window Rock? Isn’t that an oxymoron? No wonder I didn’t have any luck when I was a kid. I was using the wrong kind of rocks! I doubt if Dad would have picked me up 5 lbs from the lumber yard though. [(-D] Willy
This may be a variant of the Mytob worm. The worm poses as a message from an IT administrator, warning recipients that their e-mail account is about to be suspended.
Possible subject headers for the worm include “IMPORTANT Please Validate Your Email Account” and “Notice: Last Warning.”
It has backdoor capabilities and can open a random port, allowing a hacker to remotely access an infected machine. The variant also prevents the infected machine from accessing several antivirus and security Web sites.