Dear Valued Client

[Bugsy]

Posted in case anyone on here isn't aware.

Yet another scam doing the rounds.

Nat West this time advising that there is a problem with your account and asking you to re-enter your details. The clue is in the title.

Just DELETE

.

[JohnRoss]

Not just NatWest but several other banks including HSBC. Not to mention the 5 or 6 a day you have won a lottery or Dear friend my late husband left a lot of money I wish to get out of Nigeria/Benin and will give you some if you help me. Really fed up with this and the spam filter only traps 80% of them. Still have to look at them as once in a while the spam box has something that is not in fact spam. Don't think changing our email address will solve the problem for long...................JR 

[Alex H]

[quote user="JohnRoss"] Don't think changing our email address will solve the problem for long...................JR [/quote]

I had an Orange account for over 10 years, used it for everything including work. Hence my email addresss was all over the net.

Before changing to another provider I was getting 3-400 spams a day. (all trapped by Orange's filters)

I am not a great lover of Microsoft, but I have a hotmail account, that I have never used for other than normal day to day stuff

I have never had one spam message in the 2 1/2 years I have been using it (expect I'll get hundreds now)

[JohnRoss]

Wow that many, enough to drive you spotty!. New one today from the Google alert site. Looks ok until you open it and then it offers you anti-virus software and nothing to do with the email title at all. You decline the offer of a free scan and it starts to scan your computer anyway with a big message that your computer is infected with lots of bugs. Canceled the email and all was well. We get quite a lot of Google alerts about certain topics of interest to us but this is a right pain as if the email is genuine you cannot get at the subject matter without this happening. My missus says this has happened before but it was the first time I had seen it................................................JR

[nounours]

..... Canceled the email and all was well.

You sure all is well John, have you tried opening Word or Excel? 

That bloody thing has many variants and sits on a lot of sites, springing out with it's you have a virus etc.  I just spent a few hours getting it off a friend's PC, it was not easy as nothing like AVG or C cleaner would open and it prevented a system restore as well.  The problem  was called windowsexplorer.exe and it stopped any file with that file extension opening.  Fortunately SPYBOT dowloaded from a memory stick found it and removed it and after that all was well. This was another virus that Avast Free failed to spot.[:'(]

[AnOther]

I find it very depressing that people still open emails supposedly from

financial institutions addressed to 'Dear Valued Client, or 'Dear Customer' or anything similar. Apart

from the fact that your bank would never email you with such alleged alerts if they did they would address you personally or at least include a piece

if verifying information like your post code or a subset of your

account number.

It's worth pointing out that if you do recklessly open such an email and are presented with an invitation for a free scan or to download some software or other, then the X or close or decline or whatever option is offered could very well be the actual link to kick off the malicious payload.

You cannot and must not assume that it is a normal Window nor treat it as such !

The safest course of action in that circumstance would be to immediately close your email client or even shut down and reboot.

[JohnRoss]

Spybot found 4 tracking cookies which Microsoft Security Essentials had ignored, may just be a coincidence but I think not as I run Ccleaner every couple of days or so which should deal with cookies of that type. MSE did find and block a couple of Trojans a couple of weeks ago. Used to run AVG but it really slowed the machine down when scanning. MSE is beginning to slow it down too now, full scan runs every day and takes at least 3 hours. I wonder if scan time is directly proportional to the virus data base which must grow daily?...............................................JR

[Pierre ZFP]

A little while ago I made the mistake of turning my 'Out of Office' on for a week without checking the box 'Only reply to people in my address book'.  I now not only get spam but personalised spam which includes my name.  Sometimes my stupidity amazes me [:(]

[Théière]

Well Stopzilla runs a scan early in the morning and regularly reports on the cookies deposited on my PC (25-30 per day), most of course are low risk market analysis cookies but never the less I wonder how many people complain their PC is getting slower under the weight of all these cookies.

AVG is definitely reducing the PC speed and is also scanning overnight so as to not interfere with my daytime work, anyone running it on a dual core equipped PC?

[Pierre ZFP]

I think AVG has a huge overhead on processing and IMHO is really not that effective.

After getting fed up with AVG, I got rid of it and installed Comodo which immediately found 3 trojans that AVG happlily let in. 

Good points in favour of Comodo is that it's free, fast, accurate and does not hog resources.  Not so good points is that to get the best out of it you need to be a bit computer savvy as if you put it in Learning mode, it will initially ask you 'is this file OK' and so on.  However, it soon calms down when it's learned your preferences

[Théière]

Sounds a bit like zone alarm, you have to train that too. I may give it a go though, thanks [:)]

[Théière]

Loaded Comodo, after some spring cleaning and boy it is fast, well after AVG lets hope its good [:)]

[Pierre ZFP]

I'm glad its working for you - one is always a bit hesitant in making such recommendations [:)]

The next thing you will find is that it throws a bit of a Hissy Fit when you try and install something new, however, it soon gives you an option to treat the new thing as an 'Installer' and off it goes.

Good luck!

[Renaud]

Look who is trying to scam me now. The following has just turned-up in my spam folder. (I liked the Great British Pounds Sterling touch)...

OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION

From:

Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP

Add to Contacts

To:

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

TREASURY AND MINISTER FOR CIVIL SERVICE,

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Our ref:... ATM/13470/IDR

Your ref:...Date: 30/03/2010

BRITISH GOVERNMENT POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND

EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM.

IMMEDIATE PAYMENT NOTIFICATION

I am The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP,Prime Minister

British Government. This is

to officially inform you that (ATM Card Number

4800010177555***) has been

accredited with your favor. Your Personal

Identification Number is 477.The

VISA Card Value is £2,000,000.00(Two Million,

Great British Pounds Sterling).

This office will send to you a Visa/ATM CARD that

you will use to withdraw

your funds in any ATM MACHINE CENTER or Visa card

outlet in the world with a

maximum of £5000 GBP daily.Further more,You are

required to re-confirm the

following information to enable;The Rt Hon David

Miliband MP Secretary of

State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

commence the processing of your VISA CARD.

(1)Full names:

(2)Address:

(3)Country:

(4)Nationality:

(5)Phone #:

(6)Age:

(7)Occupation:

(8) Post Codes:

Forward Reply To: [email protected]

NOTE: That you are warned to stop further

communications with any other

person(s) or office(s) different from the staff of

the State for Foreign and

Commonwealth Affairs to avoid hitches in receiving

your payment.

Regards,

The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP

Prime Minister

Rt Hon David Miliband MP

Secretary of State for

Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

[Benjamin]

Silly boy Renaud.  [6]

Now you've communicated with somebody else you'll never get your card.

Best to bin it and try to forget this lost opportunity.  [:(]