Virus warning

I just got this e-mail that is obviously a virus stored in an attachment … I’m passing it along because I almost fell for it and clicked on the attachment (wouldn’t have mattered in my case .. these things never attack Macs).

From: staff@mangan.com

Date: Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:01:26 PM US/Pacific

To: tom@mangan.com

Subject: E-mail technical support warning.

Attachments: There is 1 attachment

Hello user of Mangan.com e-mail server,

Our main mailing server will be temporary unavaible for next two days,
to continue receiving mail in these days you have to configure our free
auto-forwarding service.

For details see the attached file.

Sincerely,
The Mangan.com team

http://www.mangan.com

There’s an attachement called “text.pif.”

I knew this was a scam because there is no such thing as a “mangan.com” team … mangan.com is a domain owned by a company called netidenity; I rent a subdomain from them called tom.mangan.com, which is how I get my tom@mangan.com e-mail address. Furthermore, there is no way on earth a company would allow its e-mail server to be unavailable for two days.

But I could see how somebody could easily be fooled by this technique … if I had a yahoo.com or hotmail.com address, I’d have no way to know the message wasn’t from those companies.

Lesson to be learned is: never click on any unexpected attachment in an e-mail. There will be times when friends, co-workers or business people will trade attachments, but you must be absolutely positive that you’re getting something you’ve already requested. Anything else is apt to be carrying a virus.