No, this is not a thread about unidentifiable canned meat.
I've been getting e-mails with subjects in German. Most of them are from odd addresses like "yourhair" or "info" but some are from my friends, who say they didn't send them and/or don't speak German. The one that I opened contained several links, which I didn't touch, and I deleted it along with the rest. However, in talking with friends, they've also been getting this type of e-mail, beginning this weekend about the same time that I started getting them, and some of them have said that they got German e-mails from me.
Has anyone here been hit with this? Does anyone know what it is? None of them are from the same address so I can't just block the sender, but they're annoying, and it worries me that people are getting them from my e-mail address.
Help?
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
Hey, I've received spam that had my own email addy in the sender header, and I KNOW I didn't spam myself. Spammers are crafty little buggers.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Sounds virusy to me.
Posted by xtownaga (Member # 7187) on :
I was getting SPAM in Russian for awhile around Christmas... it went away after awhile
It does sound rather virusy, I know some can redistribute themselves through an email adress accessed from the host computer and send itself to either random addresses or those in the address book, so you and your friends may have an infestation of one of these going on. It's also possible to spoof addresses so a message looks like it's comming from someone that it isn't really, though It seems somewhat strange that you and various friends of yours would be getting hit this way at more or less the same time...
I'd suggest running an antivirus and some malware removal tools (I happen to like Adaware and Spybot). There are many other programs that perform simmilar functions to these, but I know these have gotten good reviews and they're what I use. Also, it may well be something different (ie not virus/malware related) but it does seem to fit.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
My guess is the person(s) who's actually infected has got you and your friends in their inbox or address book someplace. So while it's always a good idea to keep your virus defs up to date and to scan on a regular basis, you're probably not going to find anything on your machine.
You might want to send out a blanket message to everyone in your own address book reminding everyone to update their defs and scan their machines, let them know that you've been receiving a lot of strange messages and you'd appreciate their help in checking their own computers for possible problems. Don't expect much compliance, though.
Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
My 2 cents: I've been getting a bunch of German spams, as well. Some have been getting through my company's external spam filter, as well.
Hmmm...looks like the quadratic equation exploded or something...
Posted by theresa51282 (Member # 8037) on :
Sometimes you can report them to your email provider and they will try and shut down the spammer if it is really bad. It worked for a friend of mine once who I believe used Yahoo
Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
Aren't most of these email viruses created to make bots out of your machines? A program will run in the background, connecting to an IRC channel to receive commands from the virus propagator. Then your computer is used in things like massive D.O.S. attacks against whoever pissed them off that day.
My mother-in-law had something like that... it got so bad that she couldn't even use her internet connection because it was so flooded. Basically, the virus(es) took over her connection completely.
Definitely get the adaware and spyware checks done quickly, and all that anti-virus stuff.
-Katarain
Posted by Peter (Member # 4373) on :
Yeh, i checked today and i had a couple of German emails from people I've never heard of. i didn't think anything of it till now. maybe we're the beginning of a german plot to take over the world
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune got slammed and wrote about it in his blog: Eric Zorn's blog
I don't think you need bugmenot to get to this.
Oh, and my Yahoo account is swamped with the German messages, fortunately they're all being automatically transferred to the Bulk folder and I'm still able to get the small amount of real mail that I send to Yahoo.
[ May 16, 2005, 03:09 PM: Message edited by: Goody Scrivener ]
Posted by Dragon (Member # 3670) on :
thanks for the info...
sounds like its not dangerous, just annoying?
Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
I've been getting the German spam, too. And so has my dad. It is sooo annoying.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
I'm not saying a word. I don't wanna jinx it.
Posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (Member # 7476) on :
All the German spam is a result of a new version of the Sober Worm. Pretty much what happened is computer already infected by a different version of the virus were simply updated to this version.
Posted by Dragon (Member # 3670) on :
Great, so how do we block it?
Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
What is the Sober Worm?
Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
One of many, Raia. I lost track of their properties.
I once threatened a respectable pharmacist of "CiaLi$" and "\/1aGGrA" to stop sending me SPAM or I'd report them to the US government.
It worked, I stopped getting SPAM from them. I started getting other SPAM.
JH
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
This won't affect Macs, will it? I haven't gotten any at home (yet), but I check the newsroom e-mail at work on a Mac. When I checked yesterday, there were a ton of them.
I keep mentioning Hatrack at work: "someone on the Hatrack forum said they were getting German spam and now we are, too." Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :
quote: the Hatrack forum
You mean "THE Hatrack Forum May God Bless It"?
I've definitely had too much Hatrack when...
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
Spammers are crafty little buggers.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)