flamingdog

I just got an email from the address dmakepeace@interquad.com, saying take it easy. It had an attachment called misc.com, looked like an application of some kind. Haven't opened it, for obvious reasons, but I went to http://www.interquad.com/ to see if there were any clues as to what this might mean... I'm none the wiser. Anyone got any thoughts?

Averett

If you don't know em, and don't know the attachment, don't open it

No clue what misc.com is, but i would bombard that website with nonsense emails for sending you one. I hate spam.

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Holo

NEVER OPEN A .COM FILE!!!! it is almost certainly a virus. .com also means "command" and not just a web extension. Don't open it what ever you do.

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flamingdog

It was history before i even posted here. don't fret, chaps, i'm not dumb. just had another weird one a minute ago. This was a delivery status notification message with an address i swear to god i've never seen beofre in my life. there's an .eml attachment with that, that i daren't open.

Mephex

and just because it has that email as the from address, it probably isn't from them at all.

Remember, the only way to prevent people from sending fraudulent emails is by placing restrictions on mailservers. The most recent trojan/virus' actually create their own mailserver on a an infected users computer. So, armed with a list of people to send to and with fake names to send from, they spam the hell out of their list.

It's really nasty, but it's the way it is, currently.

JohnnyRoyale

Mephex is correct. It works like this:

if you are Bob, and Jane has you in her contact list.
and Jand also has Dick on her list. (someone you've never heard of)
and Jane gets infected with one of these viruses.
it'll send from her machine, with you as the recipient, and Dick as the sender. So to you, it looks like you got a message from Dick, but you didn't, it was really from Jane.

BTW, there's a lot of problems with these kinds of viruses, because a number of mail scanners (norton in particular) send a message back to the supposed sender (dick, in the above example), and they then think they're infected...which they aren't. If you're getting mail delivery failuires, most likely someone with your email in their address book is infected, you got stuck in as the sender, and the failure notice got sent back to the supposed sender (you), rather than to the infected machine.

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Redlemon

There are also some viruses that send messages that look like mail delivery failures. Careful of those attachments!

Prince

I get these bullshit emails all the time. I don't know how stupid the people who get these started think I am.

Also, I keep getting several emails every single day that are supposedly from Microsoft, offering their "latest patch". I think it's important to remind folks that Microsoft never ever sends their update patches via email.

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oberon

This is one of the kinds of problems that PGP can be used to solve, assuming everyone you care about uses it. Forging email shouldn't be possible, but it is.

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Pragma

.eml is the Outlook/Outlook Express "mail letter" format. If you write/receive a letter and save to a file, it's a .eml file. A lot of the time when you get suspicious looking e-mails with .eml files attached, they contain viruses. Some e-mail clients, unfortunately, when you forward a message, save the message as a .eml and attach it, rather than including it in the body.

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hrdwareguy

Myself and another guy I work with are both getting hit with these types of messages. About 30 or 40 a day. It really sucks.

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MontanaXVI

about the .eml take care when opening these things here is an example

my buddy on AOL love to send me every freaking sorry lame ass tired joke that has been around the net for YEARS and have all been forwarded by all the other great AOL users who get a kick out of this shit.

well it comes as one big scrolling list from hell to him but to me i get it as 450 diff .eml files i have to keep opening to see the picture of Janet's tit flopping out at the SuperBowl

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heyal256

I think that the real problem with all of the "odd emails" that people are getting are due to the fact that there is a new e-mail virus every day, and a new "major" one seems to be hitting everyone every week/every other week.

note: if you ever want to "safely" open a .com file, the only way is to open it in a text editor, if it looks like garbage then it's probably an exe of some sort, if not you will basically see a text/batch file that can do anything from being mostly harmless (dir command), to a format c: command.

portwineboy

JohnnyRoyale you have just done a better job explaining this issue than the CNN article I usually just email to people. May I quote you?

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