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April 2, 2008
Best Non-News News Item of the Day: Junk Email is Bad! Junk Email Spreads Viruses!
Once again, the Daily News has saved us all from despair, anguish, and strife by providing Angelenos with vital news about our city. From the folks who brought you "Breaking News: Patchy Drizzle Expected This Morning" comes "Junk e-mails spreading that promise erotic celebrity pics, Glendale company warns."
WHAT? Hold up a minute, partner. You mean to tell me that some of the e-mail I get is (sputter, cough) fake? That there might be something BESIDES a naked photo of a pop star in that attachment from that sender I don't know who is sending the same thing to a bunch of people whose email addresses are similar to mine? You mean to tell me junk e-mail is bad? GET OUT OF TOWN!
The sordid and shocking truth:
Junk e-mails that promise erotic pictures of celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Shakira, Britney Spears and Scarlett Johannson are spreading a virus to personal computers, a Glendale-based IT security company warned today.And if you are snookered by these devilish net marauders' crafty ploy and click on the link, you will find that you are the victim of a virus. No, seriously, guys. It makes your computer sick with an illness for which there are few remedies (especially if you are on a PC, ahem). When did this start happening? And when will it stop? What can I, an average citizen, do?The e-mails generally have subject lines such as "Naked Shakira Clip," "Rihanna Exposed" or other suggestive messages and encourage readers to click a link, officials at Panda Security said.
Apparently, the best course of action is to DO NOTHING. Tempting as that naked Shakira photo is, folks, DON'T DO IT. It's not worth it. It's dangerous. It's BAD. Any other wisdom from the folks at Panda? Yes: "Panda officials advised computer users to avoid opening e-mail messages from people they do not know and clicking on links the messages may contain."
Thank you, Daily News, for opening our collective eyes.
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it's not worth it? hmm someone should've told me earlier. ill try to stay away from them now...
i guess i'll just have to stick to winning xboxes, ipods, and ringtones online.
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What? No Ethiopeans who can't spell for shit trying to give you $30 Million US dollars?
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Panda is the worst when it comes to these type of press releases. I think I finally got off their list, but I used to get a couple of these a month.
Of course they rarely mention that the email client (eg. Outlook or [horrors!] Internet Explorer) often makes it much easier for the malware to infect the machine.
So yea, don't click on unknown links, and don't open unknown attachments. Have at least one anti-virus and at least one anti-spyware package installed (and kept up to date). Whether one of those packages is Panda is up to you.
But also, try to avoid email clients which automatically load images and such over the Internet when you open a message. I've found this has been most important when avoiding email borne malware.
Oh, and backup your important data to external media (eg. backup tape, usb drive), because your computer will be compromised at some point. If not by malware, then by a hardware failure.