Strange Emails

[Jackie]

We have had a couple of strange emails in the last 12 hours. Both seem to be the same, advertising 4x4 vehicles, but the the format is most unusual as are the source addresses. Has anyone else had these and are they clean? Example given below:

VicePresidentofMarketing (First email)        NewRateSupportSpecialist (Second email) 

Hunting for the best new car?

The 2004 Rebates and 2005 Incentives are fading fast...We have them!

Avoid the games, salesmen, and run around.

An invitation is given to push a button to see more. Needless to say we have not done so................John not Jackie
 

[Mazan]

Any email that makes no sense, or appears to advertise something that you didn't ask for, should simply be deleted without hesitation. Never click on anything in such an email: just delete it. In OE you should ideally turn off the preview pane (view: layout) and should delete suspect emails before even opening them.

Ensure that all your critical Windows updates are indeed up to date. www.windowsupdate.com

[Will]

I agree totally with what Mazan says. Additionally, if you use a program like Mailwasher (a free version is available from http://www.mailwasher.net) you can view the contents of these messages, before downloading from the ISPs mail servers, and delete them if required, so that they never reach your computer. If you use your ISP's web mail service you can often do the same.

[Baz]

Will, I totally agree with your comments about the use of Mailwasher, I have now been using it for a few years. However, it would now appear that they no longer have a free version,  but a free trial version is available. I suppose with such an excellent product they need to recover costs and make money.

Baz

[Jackie]

Well thanks to everyone for the advice. The two emails have now been deleted. 

Probably a coincidence but Norton now tells me that the Boot Record has been changed. Now I did have a problem with AOL 7 yesterday and had to reload from the CD. I then deleted previous versions. Following this I ran the Defragmenter Programme. This has happened a few times over the last few years and I am now on version AOL 7d, the earlier ones having been deleted. We also found a Bloodhound Exploit.24 virus in the Restore file a couple of days ago. The Restore file was disabled and purged.

I wonder if any of this would cause Norton to report a change in the Boot record. This has never happened before and no virus has been detected in scans today. Norton is updated very other day..............John not Jackie 

[Gillstu]

Also...

As a preventive measure, try go give your e-mail address to a few people / organisations as possible.

I once posted a message to an internet news group on an aviation topic (to do with why they dim the cabin lights for take-off and landing during the hours of darkness). Nothing for a few days, then the spam started coming. At first it was a company asking me if I wanted to lease a jumbo jet and a few travel adverts, but after a few months it was all loans, viagra, penis enhancement and naked teens. (if I had the last one, I wouldn't need the one before....)

So we changed our e-mail address! 

Stuart   

[I1]

I always give a different e-mail address to different people/companies so, should I experience problems I know exactly who gave it out (or had security issues). Doesn’t stop such things but at least you know who is doing the leaking.