I was sent this link by email-do not open. This is the second time I received this. After I received the first one, I renewed my Norton subscription.
This link tells you to call a certain number and then your computer is taken over. They do a hard sell for a different security protection at an exorbitant price for McAfee. They tell you that your computer is infected, about to shut down and various other threatening things.
This link needs to be stopped. "Mookie" was stolen from my contacts. He has nothing to do with this issue.
Can anything be done about this?
alvalou
I do know someone that has the nickname "Mookie" but I should have checked the rest of the email "name".
How you do this may depend on your email client, if you download email rather than read on line, but with Windows Live Mail (and I know with some others I've used) that if I right mouse click on the upper pane of the read message function, where the individual messages are listed with Sender / Subject / date time, and select Properties you get a tabbed screen -- then click on the Details TAB and then on the Message Source button.
That gives you the entire message in text only format and reveals the whole chain of transit back to original sender and looking at the text are of the message you can often see that there are bits that don't look right like URLs to sources that have no relationship to what you would expect.
You can copy paste bits into a message here for example and ask about it.
Like this from a message saying it was from NortonSecuritySpecials but where the message source does not visibly mention them:
From: "=?ISO-8859-6?B?Tm9ydG9uU2VjdXJpdHlTcGVjaWFscw==?=" <0v8-Tf.JumZS3p2fqg1@00173 [dot] OveHwdiwIKRd4Q [dot] opening [dot] casa>
Subject: =?ISO-8859-6?B?QXJlIHlvdSBwcm90ZWN0ZWQgZnJvbSBWaXJ1c2VzPyBHZXQgTm9ydG9uIE5vdyE=?=
And the visible Subject is "Are you protected from viruses? -- get Norton now"
but the message source just shows some ISO coding in the subject area.
The text area is a typical spammers bit of jumbled words and phrases to try fool spam detectors into thinking there is meaningful text in the message ....
And the giveaway is the shown sender: <21w8izjA [at] reventures.eu> or very often is a .ru or Russia code .....
Note that I have converted what could be interactive links so that they should be inactive but be careful if you do look into details like this.
I do know someone that has the nickname "Mookie" but I should have checked the rest of the email "name". That is not his.
Just wanted every one to beware that this link is going around-again. I did meet someone (elderly lady) who got slammed with responding to the link. She was not tech savvy and really could not afford being taken like this.
Alvalou
Never click on links in emails from unknown or untrusted senders.
alvalou,
This is not a new scam. I suspect too that they do not have any authority to be "selling" McAfee software. If they did download it onto your computer I would expect it to be infected so that others could access your information and use it for their own gain.
Stopping this type of activity is difficult. In most cases there are international borders involved, something less than perfect governments, who get paid well to allow the activities, and the added problem of trying to coordinate the forces of good through all of the channels of various governments.
Currently, the best defense is an informed user who keeps their operating system and security software current. They also keep their chair / keyboard interface fully alert.