There’s a new e-mail virus going around that is fairly recent. It started back in February of 2005. The e-mail looks like this

Subject: You visit illegal websites

Dear Sir/Madam,
Content-Type:

we have logged your IP-address on more than 40 illegal Websites.

Important: Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
M. John Stellford

++-++ Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
++-++ 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 2130
++-++ Washington, DC 20535
++-++ (202) 324-3000

The attachment does not contain questions that you must answer. It contains the Sober K virus. The Sober K virus is a mass-mailing worm that will send itself to e-mail addresses gathered from compromised computers.

On February 22, 2005, the FBI issued a press release warning about this scam. You can also find out more information about this e-mail at Snopes.com.

In case you’re wondering why I occasionally post about various phishing scams and other e-mail scams, it’s because I can’t stand someone passing something to me that is a hoax and asking me to pass it on. I don’t report anything to anyone without checking it out first. Basically, I’m doing this because I want to warn people about REAL scams that could cost them money or compromise their computers. I’m also hoping it will encourage more people to check things out before forwarding them to everyone in the address book.

When it comes to e-mail, a little suspicion never hurt anyone.

4 Comments

  1. danelle says:

    I got this email about 3 days ago – right in my spam box.

  2. M. says:

    Thats Fuckin crazy…

    M.

  3. jen says:

    i TOTALLY agree with you.. i have a friend who is pretty much the same way as you. she checks everything out on google when she receives a forward. the ones i hate teh MOST are the ‘if you send this to xx people, you will receive free clothes from the GAP.’ yeah right!

  4. scott says:

    Yeah I stopped paying attention to those a while back. Some get my attention, though. I recently have been offered several methods of increasing my semen volume – something I didn’t know was possible, let alone desirable, to do. Anyway, as a Macintosh user I am virtually immune to these kinds of threats anyway.