A lil warning to computer users that I’d suggest readers of this blog pass on to their naive computer user friends and aquaintances. Here’s an example of an email that’s making the rounds (I’ve actually recieved copies of it):
Mail server report.
Our firewall determined the e-mails containing worm copies are being sent from your computer.
Nowadays it happens from many computers, because this is a new virus type (Network Worms).
Using the new bug in the Windows, these viruses infect the computer unnoticeably.
After the penetrating into the computer the virus harvests all the e-mail addresses and sends the copies of itself to these e-mail
addressesPlease install updates for worm elimination and your computer restoring.
Best regards,
Customers support service
Attached to the email will be a zip file with various names. One I’ve seen most frequently has been “Update-KB8390-x86.zip”. My anti-virus detected the latest attachment as “I-Worm/Stration”. Semi-humorous: the attached worm does just about what’s described in the subliterate, English-as-a-second-language email text. *heh*
I’m sure that’d be a consolation to folks who infected themselves.
Still, notice the name of the attached file. Naive users might think that a file with a name like that’s a Microsoft update, though, a patch they need to apply, and their anti-virus software may or may not be up to date, and so they’d infect themselves with the worm du jour.
NEVER open unscanned, unknown attachments from an unsolicited source!
NEVER open unscanned, unknown attachments from an unsolicited source!
NEVER open unscanned, unknown attachments from an unsolicited source!
What I tell you three times…
Please understand, while I KNOW most of the readers of this blog (with the vanishingly small percentage of dumbasses filtered out) would NEVER open unscanned, unknown attachments from an unsolicited source, I’m sure we all have friends or aquaintances who’d just not stop to think before CLICKing and infecting themselves.
So, just pass it on, would you?
Passing it on as a PSA at Conservative Cat, where Bruce is caught in a display of love and courage!
“Nowadays.” Heh.
Always nice to get an allegedly tech-based e-mail from someone whose English sounds like my grandmother.
“Nowadays”? Heck, I sound like your grandmother, cos I use the word alla time, even nowadays :-)… since it’s a much better word than the pejorated form, “nowdays,” or just about any other, for that matter.
But I do see what you mean, in a way. The e-text is a strange mix of subliteracy and literacy that’s not of the kind normally found in computer techie writing.
🙂
Thanks for this post. I will cross post it at The HILL Chronicles. In the interrim I would like to repeat Random Yaks thought–they echo mine:
“Always nice to get an allegedly tech-based e-mail from someone whose English sounds like my grandmother.”
Really, but may I dare add I think my grandmother spoke better English than these evil people that do such thing! Sheese!