Spam is unwanted email. A short time ago it was limited to advertising. That's no longer true. Today spam is far more insidious. Hackers have learned that in spite of all admonitions to the contrary,
most people still continue to open email attachments (95% of all viruses are transmitted exactly this way). So the hackers are now sending viruses in these spam email attachments that are used to hijack your computer and turn it into a spam relay computer. That's right; unwittingly you may now have allowed your computer to be used by hackers to send spam to millions of other computers. Much of this spam is pornographic or otherwise inappropriate. But it gets even worse. When your computer is used in this manner, your ISP is required to shut off your account until you can prove that all spam relay viruses have been removed from your computer. The cost to do so may exceed the cost of buying a new computer! The reason is simple... many of these spam relay viruses are so smart they "morph" themselves every few hours into a completely different looking and acting virus. While your ISP is loathe to suspend your 'Net access account, they must do so for the general health of the 'Net. This is especially true of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks where your computer is used to flood a target computer with millions of emails forcing the target email server to be shut down. You, and you alone, are responsible for protecting your computer and ensuring your continued ability to access the 'Net.
CAUTION: The common anti-virus packages (Norton, McAfee) will NOT catch these spam relay viruses; remember they "morph" themselves every few hours (some even remove themselves every few hours so that detection is impossible).
A recent federal law requires spammers to give you an "opt-out" (unsubscribe) link. Sounds like a great idea, right? Wrong! Spammers are far smarter than politicians so they now use a social engineering technique that works like this; you get a spam email and click on the "opt-out" link thinking you are telling them to take you off their spam list. The link, however, is really a link to a keylogger which is installed instantly on your computer without your knowledge or consent. It records every keystroke and mouse click you make and sends all of them to the spammers who then sell your information to hackers to use for identity theft, especially credit card fraud.
Therefore, NEVER OPEN ANY EMAIL ATTACHMENT AND NEVER RESP0ND TO ANY SPAM. We recommend
Mailwasher Pro. It allows you to manage your email while it is still on the email server, BEFORE you download it to your computer. That makes it all but impossible for your computer to become infected. It also gets rid of SPAM (junkmail). We recommend
Mailwasher Pro to our clients (and use it ourselves on ALL our computers).
If you have any questions or suspect your computer has a virus, contact us. We are computer security experts and will be happy to help you.
