Recent NCA warning of cyber crime

[Don Petter]

And I could so easily have become infected as I get so many odd emails purporting to come from BT or Amazon or others. The attachments are always .exe.

Surely if you don't click (execute) the attechment and just delete the whole email you aren't going to get infected?

[MrGongGong]

Surely if you don't click (execute) the attechment and just delete the whole email you aren't going to get infected?

I haven't used it for years BUT
if you use Outlook (as well as many other mail clients) it downloads everything to your computer
THEN you choose to open it or not
seems a bit of a daft way to go about things in this age of fast connections

OR
is it part of a plan to stop people going online when they are a little "squiffy" ?

[Don Petter]

I haven't used it for years BUT
if you use Outlook (as well as many other mail clients) it downloads everything to your computer
THEN you choose to open it or not
seems a bit of a daft way to go about things in this age of fast connections

OR
is it part of a plan to stop people going online when they are a little "squiffy" ?

Is there not a difference between opening the email itself and opening any attachments?

[MrGongGong]

Is there not a difference between opening the email itself and opening any attachments?

Yes
But it seems a bit like giving you ballon filled with anthrax and suggesting that you carry it around in your bag but don't whatever you do burst it !

[PJPJ]

Is there not a difference between opening the email itself and opening any attachments?

Yes, there is - however, as I wrote, some of the emails look like the real thing and unless you're on the ball and suspicious it's not difficult to fall for the scam. After all, if you're expecting an email telling you to alter your email host you may not think twice about running the application.

I seem to remember falling for a lot of these resulted in all the people in your address book getting emails telling them you've been stranded somewhere abroad and are in need of several thousand pounds to get home. Meanwhile, you are locked out of your account.

[PJPJ]

I haven't used it for years BUT
if you use Outlook (as well as many other mail clients) it downloads everything to your computer
THEN you choose to open it or not
seems a bit of a daft way to go about things in this age of fast connections

OR
is it part of a plan to stop people going online when they are a little "squiffy" ?

That's why I prefer using desktop mail.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks to johnb, Dave, PJPJ and Frances for your comments - I've run the Symantec programme and it found nothing serious (an issue with "Registry" was all), so phew!

... perversely, I get worried that none of my scans ever finds anything.

- I've been there, too!

[MrGongGong]

I think the answer is
that Windows is basically shite and pretty useless from the bottom up
it's cheap if you don't mind periodically spending time (and/or money) dealing with this kind of nonsense
but life is far too short to have to learn all this and remember it all .......

I have an old Windows 3:1 machine somewhere , I bet that is immune !

[Don Petter]

Yes
But it seems a bit like giving you ballon filled with anthrax and suggesting that you carry it around in your bag but don't whatever you do burst it !

My ballons are usually filled with St Emilion.

[Don Petter]

Yes, there is - however, as I wrote, some of the emails look like the real thing and unless you're on the ball and suspicious it's not difficult to fall for the scam. After all, if you're expecting an email telling you to alter your email host you may not think twice about running the application.

Yes, but, if you're anything like me, you get emails purporting to be from BT, Nat West, PayPal, Amazon, Santander et al, several of which I haven't even got accounts with. The first check is to hover over the requested link, and see if it goes to somewhere in Bongoland or a URL which you are used to, and, if necessary, as I have done with a 'BT' one, ring the company directly to check on the authenticity. (That email was indeed spurious.)

[johnb]

You can also look at the email header information (something I always to if I have any suspicions whatsoever). Often the source details can reveal that the email is a scam.

Someone mentioned receiving exe attachments. Never, ever open an exe attachment - doing so is utter madness. I am very cautious about opening any attachments, even if they look innocuous.

[PJPJ]

Yes, but, if you're anything like me, you get emails purporting to be from BT, Nat West, PayPal, Amazon, Santander et al, several of which I haven't even got accounts with. The first check is to hover over the requested link, and see if it goes to somewhere in Bongoland or a URL which you are used to, and, if necessary, as I have done with a 'BT' one, ring the company directly to check on the authenticity. (That email was indeed spurious.)

Indeed. And I show headers before forwarding to spoof@ or whatever. As I wrote, I haven't fallen for one of these yet, but I do know several intelligent people who have.

Then again, over half of my incoming phone calls are scams.

[Don Petter]

Then again, over half of my incoming phone calls are scams.

Wow! That seems a lot. But, thinking about it, we get maybe four or five phone calls a week and one or two of them could well be 'We hear you've had a motor accident' or 'There's a new government grant for energy saving', so you could be about right!

[Frances_iom]

BT is being a bit of a pain. It seems years since they first told me my email was being changed from BT Yahoo to BT Mail and the change has yet to happen.

BT has a lousy history - Yahoo is a cesspit but BT has in past used Phorm which took the easy way of tracking users actions by adding extra Javascript to each downloaded page - you can avoid some of the problems by not using webmail (which generally forces you to run Javascript ie you are allowing anyone to execute their program on your machine ) but fetching your own mail and then opening with a locked down mail program (and don't rely on an 'exe' tag - zip, pdf and even jpg are also used as vectors - never ever click on an email link - use copy and paste into your browser address bar so you can see where it is heading - likewise NEVER EVER click on a shortened link - you have no idea whatsover of where this is going to take you (most techie boards ban them for this reason)