Scary scam email

Jivesinger

agrinnall wrote: »

Why is that email any more scary than any other scam?

Because the scammers seemingly have the genuine postal addresses which match the email addresses they're sending to. Most spam /scams doesn't have this.

stoatula

I got it, too - with the wording slightly different and supposedly coming from France. I have a clue, though: it was sent to an email address I don't use in many places. One of those places (and the only one that I can recall has my physical address) is eBay.

My money's on an eBay breach -- possibly fallout from the one in 2014. When I read up on that breach (which was HUGE), they said one of the things they got was encrypted passwords, and they've probably been able to decrypt them. So change your eBay pass.

It also said name, address and birthday is enough to start accounts in some places, so check your credit rating from time to time.

Scary stuff, but probably harmless. Glad I'm not alone.

notbritishgas

notbritishgas wrote: »

The address I received my email on (virgin) was only known by two organisations.
First an eBay account that I have never used and second the Royal Mail survey site.
Do they correspond with anyone else.

stoatula wrote: »

I got it, too - with the wording slightly different and supposedly coming from France. I have a clue, though: it was sent to an email address I don't use in many places. One of those places (and the only one that I can recall has my physical address) is eBay.

My money's on an eBay breach -- possibly fallout from the one in 2014. When I read up on that breach (which was HUGE), they said one of the things they got was encrypted passwords, and they've probably been able to decrypt them. So change your eBay pass.

It also said name, address and birthday is enough to start accounts in some places, so check your credit rating from time to time.

Scary stuff, but probably harmless. Glad I'm not alone.

Ah, have we got something here.

donna1979

agrinnall wrote: »

Why is that email any more scary than any other scam? Even if you don't just delete rubbish like this automatically the spelling mistakes and garbled English make it clear that it's not in any way valid.

Because it was directly to my husband (his name rather than "my friend" etc), it had my actual address (I've never seen that before) and on the same day I have had my card cloned and have hand text messages and phone calls from my bank as it had been fraudulently used. Obviously a coincidence when I have heard others experiences but initially I was concerned. I really just wanted to know whether deleting and moving on was the way to go rather than actually contacting police.

Sope

vls95 wrote: »

I have just received the exact same, but I've stupidly opened it. Anyone know what to do now?

What happened when you opened it?
Did it actually contain any personal data?
I believe that the more recent versions of MS Word (I don't use it myself) are set by default not to automatically run an embedded macro?

Still, I would run a few different anti-malware scanners to check it hasn't been triggered.
This is a good free resource....
http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/security-tools.html

Good luck and fingers crossed you've escaped without damage.

inked

Had the same email yesterday, my email address but but wife's name which also leads me to believe that it's been obtained from eBay as its one of the few places that would be set up in such a manner.

emmbrook

I got the same message. Virus scan didn't throw anything up but I'm not going to open an unexpected .dot file anyway. Sent it to Microsoft anti virus team. My guess up is that it could be ransomware as that often is spread via .dot files. Some database somewhere has been obtained for the addresses to be correct I assume. Not that they can do much with just your address, it's not hard to find out,

peadar

A friend has forwarded this to me. The attachment is a .dot (Word template) file that is password-protected (so it can pass under the radar of virus checkers). Word indicates that the language of the .dot file is Russian.

Were you to try to open the file and enter the password the sender provides, you would be invited to enable macros - something you should absolutely NOT do!!

There is no text in the .dot file. It's almost certainly a trojan.

AndyPix

Standard virus infection vector :
The file will have macros that download ransomware.


It is password protected so that AV cannot scan it hence your virus check saying it was clean.


Give yourself a pat on the back, Delete and ignore and go about your day
(And feel a little for the countless people that no doubt actually fell for it)

EdwardB

donna1979 wrote: »

Hi
I have received a scam email today. I'd normally just delete it and think nothing of it but I have also had a security problem with my bank card which Natwest picked up. This is the email
ello, Richard!

I am disturbing you for a very urgent matter. Though you don't know me, but I have considerable ammount of individual info concerning you. The matter is that, most likely mistakenly, the information of your account has been emailed to me.
For example, your address is:
**********

I am a law-obedient citizen, so I decided to private data may have been hacked. I pinned the file - Lewis.dot that that was emailed to me, that you could explore what data has become reachable for attackers. File password is - 9234

Best wishes,
Gregory Uttley


Where I have put stars it is my actual address! The email is to my husband but we just use the same email address for home stuff.
Please can you offer advice?

Previously scammers sent emails to lists they gathered and hacked from forums and sites. if you were a nat west customer then the conversion rate went up on this click bait email.

What is worse now is that they have 4m TalkTalk accounts, they can break it down into lists by bank, by town by anything they damn like. I wonder if your hubby was with TT?

quarantine the scam email, you can be sure the attachment has a payload.