Social engineering strikes again.
Last spring, a spam posing as a reunion invitation made its rounds around the Internet. The spam/virus gets spread by an unsuspecting and less than alert computer user opens an email supposedly from a class mate inviting them to a reunion. Once the email is opened, a root-kit (hard to detect spyware/virus hybrid) gets deployed on the person’s computer and begins to spread itself from there.
This scenario repeats itself hundreds of thousands times over a couple of days and eventually infects millions of computers around the world.
A variant of the very same ploy started to make its rounds again this year coming to a crescendo over the past couple of weeks with millions more people duped.
Why are so many computer users desperate enough for friendship that after years of warnings, they continue to open up suspect emails? I cringe every time someone tells me, “I only open up emails from people I know.” Don’t you think that the degenerates in our society know that? Of course they do, and that’s why they purposely design these types of malware to take advantage of your inability to distinguish between legitimate email and suspect email. It’s also why the most visited page on my web site is about puppy scams…people, in general, don’t want to think. They want everyone else to think for them, but curse and cry when they are taken advantage.
Wake up people! The answers are out there if you want to find them and learn from them. Anyone who puts the least amount of thought into what they are doing with email should have no problems what-so-ever with this kind of tripe.
