USPS Fake E-mail

This is a good one – came in this morning…no text at all, just an image in an email: When the hell is the 27th of Juny? And the entire image is a link to www.annehelene.fr/XXXXXXXXXX.htm – the Xs are likely changed for every email, etc. If you mistype the link or go to the root of the site you get this – a seemingly legit French cooking site: But if you go to the … Read more…

Scammers phishing by text

Well, scammers have moved “up” in the world…first they were scamming by phone…now, they’re using SMS\Text messages to try to get you to browse to some fake, malicious website. Here’s the text I received from 321-332-5220 this morning: Wow! My reward from BestBuy.com[.gpck.biz]! Rule number one about any email\text\anything: DON’T CLICK THE LINK. Rule #2: Don’t click the link. EVER. A quick whois shows nothing useful: Registrant Address1:                         Attn: gpck.bizRegistrant Address2:                         Aptds. 0850-00056Registrant City:                             PanamaRegistrant Postal Code:                      Zona … Read more…

The Case of the Print Spooler That Stops Running

Recently, I had cleaned up a virus from a user’s laptop – it was a fairly straightforward cleanup, and I thought I was done. Not quite. The user had said that her husband had been trying to print and was getting a print spooler error…had the spooler randomly stopped? I sent the command to restart the spooler. This did not work as it seemed the spooler continually stopped running. I then sent the path for … Read more…

Cardmember Service hijacked

The other day a user sent me a screenshot of an online banking website with a comment of “I have a virus..?” I was happy that the user had learned to spot malware or fraudulent activity so quickly….but as it turns out, the user had already called the bank and spoke to the support team – they were the ones that informed the user about having a virus. I tried logging in to the banking … Read more…

Scammers phishing by phone now?!?!?

I just got a call from 620-450-4497 which came up as Pratt, KS. It was some cheap recording stating that “My debit card has been lost or stolen. Press 1 to reactivate” Being that I just love hearing all the latest scams, I eagerly pressed 1 to “find out more about my debit card”. I was then prompted to “press 1 to continue or 2 to exit”- 1 was pressed again of coarse. I was … Read more…

My [very un-]clean PC

Now it’s time to see if MyCleanPC can really clean an infected PC. So here’s my test Windows XP SP3 VM – the only change I have made is the malware that I ‘accidentally’ downloaded – in reality, it was the typical ‘click-where-I-should-not-have’ and then have an IE window come up looking like the ‘My Computer’ window and being scanned….a very common scare tactic: Your computer is infected, download this program to clean it up! … Read more…

My [not so] Clean PC

Lately, the local stations have been playing the stupid ‘MyCleanPC’ ad A TON. I have never used any of these products and I have always throught that they look cheezy and “gimic-ey”. Here’s the ad: I think the best part is the horrible pink hue on the speaker – hilarious. So I had to try this out and see just what it was all about. So first up, I needed a PC that I could … Read more…