Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Virus/Worm/Trojan Email Hijack alert

Hi All,
I hate to post this in this manner, but maybe someone noticed I havent been on the forum in a couple of weeks. My computer crashed because of a nasty worm that takes over your address book and I just got up and running again. I recieved mine from Tom H. Soconyguy@hotmail. I searched here but couldnt find Tom's profile to let him know. If anyone here knows him, please let him know that I believe his email address has been hijacked . Have him PM me and I can give him the details. In the meantime, I suggest that nobody open an email from that address because its probably not him mailing you.
John

One thing is to have good antivirus, firewall, mal-ware software. Keep it updated!!!

Randy

I've received a few odd looking emails from Tom H. Soconyguy@hotmail in the last week....but did not open them. Glad I just deleted them!
Jim

Could be a Allis name & email to get us to open them.

I highly recommend that everyone has a strong anti-virus program running and constantly updated automatically. I've gotten thousands of emails from around the world over the last 14 years that this site has been in operation. I haven't had my computer infected by a virus yet. I run Norton 360 at its highest settings, blocking scripting and external images in email. I never open attachments that I have any doubts about at all.

Thats all good advice, but let me clarify this a bit. I have anti-virus and my IP provides a great spam filter (Condor). I never get spam. After my emails go through Condor, I then direct them to mailwasher, another great program. In Mailwasher, you can read the email before it gets to your computer (remote server). I made the mistake of not reading it first in mailwasher because I thought it came from a member here and let it go through to my email. I then opened it, and it was all over.
So three lessons here. Have all the good anti-virus stuff (but that doesnt block emails from someone you know) and a good Mailwasher program...but you have to use them and not be duped because they can hijack anyones email. My mistake there. Also, please set your email to send in text, not html. That wont prevent you from getting a worm, but it will prevent it from being spread because it can only be sent in html.
John

Got the same email twice,opend it but didn't click on the link.

Gas Stuff, I didnt open the link either. As soon as I saw the link, I knew it wasnt really from an Old Gas member and deleted it. Unfortunately, theis is a worm and it embeds in the email...you dont have to open the link to get infected.

If you have recieved an email like this, you should shut down your internet connection by unpluging your modem AND your telephone/DSL connection. Then run a full/deep scan of your anti-malware program. If you have more than one anti-malware program, I would run all of them. Take a moment to be sure you are sending emails in text, not html. If you use Outlook Express, go to Tools, Options, Send and click "plain text" instead of html.
John