Recently I visited a web site called something like "work at home " just looking for some alternative way to earn part time money. I guess I had to sign up with my name and e-mail, I don't remember. It never did tell me much of anything useful but I kept getting a pop-up message when I was trying to get off it. Are you sure you want to leave this page? I punched yes I do. It popped up again and again every time I wanted to navigate away from the page. Don't remember how I got away from it, but in the meantime, apparently, it was collecting my e-mail addresses of friends and relatives and business associates. It has since sent out e-mails to them with my name in the header as the sender, with the simple message of Hey howya doin? and a link to the same site where I was getting the pop-ups.

Is there some way I can report this? Or is this just a part of living on the internet? Now my name is associated with the spam and I'm peeeed!!

Also got an e-mail scam from a PayPal wannabe. Trying to get some "extra information" out of me so they could "re-instate" my account. I checked with PayPal first to see if it was legit, and also reported it their spam department. Cool that they have a place to complain about spam and scams.

You could try sending a message to all of your contacts saying something like...
If you received or have received a message from JOE BLO'S WORK FROM HOME SCAM CENTRE, I did not send it...do not open it, delete it straight away...it is a Trojan that will collect and send a message to all those in your address book.

You could also mention that they send something similar to their contacts.

Apart from that mate, unless you have an authority in the US that has a law against the scammers doing this, there isn't really much you can do.

Your action with the PayPal scammer was totally correct mate. Ebay have the same facility, as does Hotmail. I don't open those type of PHISHING emails...I just forward them to the relevant website they purport to be representing and let them deal with them.

I also receive in my Hotmail account the weird and wonderful Hello Dear Friend, I am Joseff Mgombi, the General Manager of the Nigerian Scammers Bank and I have a proposition for you involving US$45 million dollars. or Dear Sir, I am the Chief Accountant for the Guang Dong Bank in Hong Kong. We have recently had a customer pass on, leaving a balance of US$26 Million. I am the only one that knows about this account and I would like to offer you a mutually beneficial business deal. I also pass those on to the relevant authorities in the country of origin.

Another one you have to be very careful of is the bogus telephone call from the Microsoft Technical Team. They claim to have identified a problem with your computer and offer to fix it for you...this of course involves you giving them "remote access". Once they have this remote access, they download the contents of your HDD and scan it for information that is useful to them...especially bank account details and passwords etc. I have received two of these calls, but I think they know me now because they haven't called back. The first time I let them get about a quarter of the way into their blurb, laughed, and hung up. The second time I played dumb and let them talk me through their process right up to the point where they asked me to provide remote access...I them abused 11 sorts of sh1t out of the Indian dork on the other end...calling him every nasty, racist, profanity I could think of at the time. He still tried to talk me around though so I really hooked into him then. It certainly made me feel good knowing that I had kept him on the phone for quite some time and let him think that he had a dummy hooked...only to dump him on his head in a very rude nasty way. I only wish I had a way of "dealing" with him in person.

Cheers, Vince

Suzanne depending on what browser you use there are a few options. With internet explorer under tools>safety> report unsafe website, their is also under tool> safety>inprivate browsing. Firefox has smiler options tools> start private browsing and under help> report web forgery. Hope this helps.
One more thing don't use internet explorer and outlook, they are to integrated thats why it's easy to get explorer to look in outlook for your contacts. I've used an email client called "the bat" for years and have never had my email contacts bothered

Vince wrote:

You could try sending a message to all of your contacts saying something like... If you received or have received a message from JOE BLO'S WORK FROM HOME SCAM CENTRE, I did not send it...do not open it, delete it straight away...it is a Trojan that will collect and send a message to all those in your address book. You could also mention that they send something similar to their contacts. Apart from that mate, unless you have an authority in the US that has a law against the scammers doing this, there isn't really much you can do. Your action with the PayPal scammer was totally correct mate. Ebay have the same facility, as does Hotmail. I don't open those type of PHISHING emails...I just forward them to the relevant website they purport to be representing and let them deal with them. I also receive in my Hotmail account the weird and wonderful Hello Dear Friend, I am Joseff Mgombi, the General Manager of the Nigerian Scammers Bank and I have a proposition for you involving US$45 million dollars. or Dear Sir, I am the Chief Accountant for the Guang Dong Bank in Hong Kong. We have recently had a customer pass on, leaving a balance of US$26 Million. I am the only one that knows about this account and I would like to offer you a mutually beneficial business deal. I also pass those on to the relevant authorities in the country of origin. Another one you have to be very careful of is the bogus telephone call from the Microsoft Technical Team. They claim to have identified a problem with your computer and offer to fix it for you...this of course involves you giving them "remote access". Once they have this remote access, they download the contents of your HDD and scan it for information that is useful to them...especially bank account details and passwords etc. I have received two of these calls, but I think they know me now because they haven't called back. The first time I let them get about a quarter of the way into their blurb, laughed, and hung up. The second time I played dumb and let them talk me through their process right up to the point where they asked me to provide remote access...I them abused 11 sorts of sh1t out of the Indian dork on the other end...calling him every nasty, racist, profanity I could think of at the time. He still tried to talk me around though so I really hooked into him then. It certainly made me feel good knowing that I had kept him on the phone for quite some time and let him think that he had a dummy hooked...only to dump him on his head in a very rude nasty way. I only wish I had a way of "dealing" with him in person. Cheers, Vince

I am thinking some concertina wire and one of those wild camels you've got running around the northern desert with a fire lit under it's arse.

That would be a good start mate. I am so sick of these Indians scammers...and I believe that the Indian call centres are on-selling customer information from the phone companies here in Australia.

Have never trusted anyone from that part of the world...and I NEVER will. They are slimy in every aspect of the word.

Cheers, Vince

Suz if you contact your local law inforcement they will be able to give you an email address to report these sh%&heads to. the guys are searching for scammers and illegal porn all the time.they will love to deal with these aholes and have the tools and know how to do it right.

MrFixIT did it again!! I use FireFox and the Help section has a report thing-a-ma-hooie that I just used to report it. Thanks!! I feel better now.

MrFixIt he's my man
If he can't fit it
nobody can


Suz

your welcome Suzanne

BTW it happens in android apps also. I was installing a kids puzzle for my grandson when I noticed a Search Icon appear on one of my pages. I couldn't open my browser without being taken to their search page. It was simple to fix by resetting my home page and uninstalling the offending app. This was my first experience with problems on my device. My wife has an IPad and she was smug about it being malware proof.

MacD wrote:

My wife has an IPad and she was smug about it being malware proof.

No software is malware proof!! Malware Proof! Not

Linux.....

This is the OS the hackers use and they don't want their systems affected so there is no linux based malware. Besides when your OS operates in a RAM disk any problems disappear when the power is shut down.

I love it!
Paul

Paul that what I have, I use Ubuntu 10.04. So maybe I did something to trigger this?

Suz, what version of firefox are you using on 10.04? I'm assuming your keeping up with the updates.. The version I'm running on 10.04 is FF 10.01..

Suz,
I run Ubuntu 10.10 and firefox but I don't run it in a Ram disk. If I need to go where I might need the protection I run Puppy linux from ram - that way I can get on the "hack net" and get those special projects that I like to play with.
My Umbuntu machine runs through a firewall (software), a router with a hardware firewall and software firewall, and through a modem that is hardware firewalled. I don't have any issues with any of my systems.
I run win7 on one machine, and dual boot DOS and Linux from another. With three OS's I should have some problems but I am fairly safe with the way I do things. I have the web browsers set to clear histories and cookies on exit, then I use Ccleaner, Spybot, antivirus and regular cleaning and complete back-ups with drive images. If I go down today I am back after 20 minutes of ISO burn to a formatted hard drive. Back-ups are ok but the iso image is a lot better.

Generally Linux isn't a issue security wise, especially if you get a distribution with SELinux installed as default.

But your browsers cookies and catch allow this kind of data mining to occur. Safari is the worst for security breaches at the moment.

In the end nothing is perfectly protected, Linux is better due to the use of it by malware writers and the people who spend times of time trying to patch it to make sure their own systems do not get attacked.

MacOS X since its FreeBSD with a different GUI, does have malware and its not too hard for many people to write it. But again FreeBSD/Linux have been left alone for the most part. All the real and "theoretical" malware I have heard of for MacOS relies heavily on attacking the differences between it and FreeBSD, which means, they are at least taking the time not to bother their own when they write the stuff.

iOS, Black Berry's OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile etc, are all security through obscurity because of the way its installed on phones makes it difficult for someone to lift the actual OS from the phone and attempt to write malware, but people still figured out ways to jail break the devices within days from launch. If you can jailbreak something, typically the same attack methods are used for malware. So malware will come, there just isn't as much of a push for it yet.

Dimitri