28 September 2011

VIRUS WARNING

Wow! Did I ever receive a very convincing email today. Since I did have a mistake on my tax return this year, I almost fell for the ruse. A couple of things stood out from this e-mail. It was unsolicited, it was from a person I had not dealt with, and it was saying my bank returned my tax return funds to the IRS. (Your bank would not do that without first notifying you.)

Of course, it also had a link to a "PDF" file. Why do I put that in quotes? Because when I hovered my mouse over it, the link actually showed me that it went to some other website. Look at the picture to see the website. DO NOT go to the website.

I REPEAT THIS EMAIL IS SPAM AND A VIRUS. DO NOT FOLLOW ANY LINKS IF YOU RECEIVE A SIMILAR EMAIL.



The HEADER
As a side note, I have no idea how it passed the Barracuda spam filter. The email says it is from Pam_Delany @irs .gov but the message-id is from 5624897102.4PPR0IZP169555 @ bwhsagtmxa.foczytgll.ru (Note the .ru TLD, that's Russia)
and the envelope from field is from helpfullyj @ pado.com.br (Brazil) The message passed through galati.astral.ro which is Romania.