Virus PM

gijs · February 06, 2010, 09:39:19 AM

hi i just got the following Forum PM:

Hello, friend. There are viruses' activities from your computer in last few days. Strongly recommend you to check your computer. You can find a report about your computer's security and solve every problem with it here: Link removed
Thank you. Forum member.

Ofc if i follow the link i get to a site i dont trust telling me the site is unsafe and i should continue to his 'homepage' :g:. I havent done this cos i dont trust anything that redirects me without telling me exacly why.

im running ESET NOD32 Antvirus 4 and scanning my pc as im typing this message..i dont suspect ill find anything but you can never be to safe with these things.

If anyone can shed some light on this id appriciate it:D

Jamin · February 06, 2010, 09:57:01 AM

It's spam and the account is now banned, and delete the pm.

Penfold · February 06, 2010, 09:57:14 AM

Yes,

Bellanie and also received one.

I've alerted our very own Gandypedia who is knowledgeable in such virtual things and will report back.

I'm guessing not to visit the link although, dammit, it's tempting. Perhaps I'll whack up a virtual pc to have a look...

Bastet · February 06, 2010, 09:57:26 AM

Got the same PM, and if you look closely the guy that send it has been banned, so i quess someone else agreed it was rubish.

Gandalf · February 06, 2010, 09:59:11 AM

Looks like a ruse to get people to visit that site and then it's a spoof av program that detects viruses that don't really exists. The software will promise to get rid of them if you pay for the subscription to the fake av program. The Russian Mafia then have your cc details and you are screwed!

http://www.scambusters.org/fakeantivirus.html

Penfold · February 06, 2010, 10:00:44 AM

Thanks Gandy

OldBloke · February 06, 2010, 10:01:21 AM

Despite our defences they will find ways to spam us. Sending a PM means it's not picked up as quickly as say a forum post which is either quickly reported or spotted by a mod.

If you get spam PMs report them asap and the banhammer will be applied.

One other thing, please post in the general area of the forum so all members know what's happening :thumb:

Bastet · February 06, 2010, 10:01:22 AM

Quote from: Gandalf;303427Looks like a ruse to get people to visit that site and then it's a spoof av program that detects viruses that don't really exists. The software will promise to get rid of them if you pay for the subscription to the fake av program. The Russian Mafia then have your cc details and you are screwed!

http://www.scambusters.org/fakeantivirus.html

Besides, there are free programs like avast that are proven to be better then most paid for programs.

And lol, triple post.

gijs · February 06, 2010, 11:10:07 AM

oke thx for the info

P.S. deleted the PM ofc

Tirkad · February 06, 2010, 11:22:12 AM

Thanks for the info, i was contacted by an actually banned account via pm, advertising the fake antivirus you are talking about. Keep spreading the news, and thanks again for the tempestive warning.

Sithvid · February 06, 2010, 02:24:33 PM

I got one too, I bubbled over with excitement at the prospect of a PM....bah

Deminion · February 06, 2010, 02:45:13 PM

I got it also, already deleted

spiritus · February 06, 2010, 10:58:04 PM

got the same mail, deleted it.
was a funky linky :ranting2:
and a mail from a forummember with no threads writen or replyed in I don't trust :ninja:

Azunai · February 07, 2010, 12:20:19 AM

I said this ingame too, I always go by the following principle:

No one on the interwebz gives enough of a rat's tail-end about my PC's security to approach me personally about improving it (through silly PMs like this). Anyone or anything that does (pretend to) is a fake and bad for my PC in one way or another, or Windows' annoying security centre warning (or sometimes both).

TeaLeaf · February 07, 2010, 09:07:04 AM

Thread transferred to open section from the DMR section.

Unfortunately this type of spam is on the increase and is quite difficult to stop as it is an individual account registration by a person for each one.

Apologies for any that do beat us, but the Admins are trying to keep up with the banning of spam accounts as soon as they are identified. Identification is however largely a manual process and takes an individual decision by an Admin as to whether or not the account is valid. So far we're not doing too badly at it and have only banned a 'real member' once (to the best of our knowledge).

Out of interest, this is the volume we're having to manually review and make a decision on at the moment. You can see from the below that spam is a growing problem, so in addition to the anti-spam technology already employed we're investigating what additional measures can be implemented. We already have some lined up for vB4 when we make the switch (over and above the built-in anti-spam measures) but you'll not see the benefit fo those until we transfer to vB4.

279 = total number of banned users on this forum since 2004.
of which:
221 were banned in the last 12 months
197 were banned in the last 6 months
143 were banned in the last 3 months
41 were banned in the last month

Every ban is the result of research by an Admin and a conclusion reached based on evidence, followed by a manual ban. It's quite a few minutes of time per ban.

Clearly these are only the bans, the Admins actually end up investigating a lot more than that, in practice we're having to try to manually check every single new member registration. In total across all the new registrations it's quite a time sink for us :sad: