A whole lot of spam in February. As you know, Symantec issues a monthly Spam report from our researchers in Symantec Security Response. Ours just came out in March for the previous month and (ugh!) shows what you've already seen in your own email boxes - spam is now 78.5% of all your email. Oh what the heck - let's just say we're now seeing the 80/20 Pareto rule of spam (in memory of the management guru, Joseph Juran, who created the Pareto rule and recently passed away.) 80% of the email you get is useless, but you still need to manage your inbox diligently to find the 20% of email you really want.
And like unproductive customers (the original reference point for the 80/20 rule) you need to dispose of your spam without harm. A recent social engineering whiz of spam is called the "MonaRonaDona". Coming into your computer via the ol' Trojan Horse, this piece of malware displays a message that you've been infected. Many of the victims then turn to their friend, the search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc) to find cure. And originally, the return search results pushed a special antivirus product to remove "MonaRonaDona". That tool, of course, comes from the virus writer and may cause more harm than good. It looks like the media coverage of this virus is getting more "clean" results up to the first page of search results but as usual, the customer has to be super careful about what link they click.
In situations like these, stay far away from "no name" vendors and websites. Even in the comments on the many big city newspaper stories on this topic, I've seen links to ".exe" files that will supposedly clean up the infection but are posted on completely unknown websites. Ugh! More trouble ahead for the customer who turns down dark internet alleys for removing this internet "tumor." Whether you use Symantec/Norton's tools or go to another well-known and credible vendor, please make sure you avoid these shortcuts and backrooms for your internet security solutions! Here's the link to our techy writeup with removal instructions for this virus (called "Monagrey" on our site)
To avoid this infection to begin with, make sure your internet security software is up-to-date and running when you are using your computer. Never accept a file from an unknown source or agree to download any executables (.exe files) when you are visiting a website, unless you went to that site in order to do just that.
And if you think you are already infected, please visit your favorite big name internet security company's website to run a free scan and find out.
I'm just a click away if you need more help - marian@norton.com