Friday, August 8, 2008

CNN Custom Alerts spam/spoof email - it is a virus

Most junk mail and spam mail is pretty easy to spot. I noticed today that I had gotten several emails from "CNN Alerts" with the subject line "CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert." Since I had not signed up for this sort of thing, I thought it was strange, but opened it to see what it was nonetheless (no file was attached, obviously).

It seems to send you to a link and sends you to CNN sites that are otherwise accurate. But if you mouse over the "Full Story" link, you'll see it attempts to take you to some international website. Another blogger reports that the link in fact sends you to a malware site, so be smart, use your head and don't click on it.

Other sites also have reported on this particular spam and confirm that it is another attempt at scamming the innocent and unsuspecting email public: Donna's Security Flash, Spyware Techie, CNET Spyware; Can Talk Tech (which has the screenshot).

Like the IRS email scam attempted a few months ago, use your noggin and keep this particular in your spam folder.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fell for the e-mail and opened one. I can't remember if I followed a link. I tried to "unsubscribe" which didn't work. But now I have "DrWatson Postmortem Debugger" issues. It showed up once so far. Then I read a blog that said the debugger is a front for a more dangerous stealth virus. Help! What should I do?

Anonymous Delawarean said...

I'm not a computer expert, and if your problem persists, you should take your computer to a repair site, such as Best Buy's "geek squad." Personally, my anti-virus software of choice stopped being "Dr. Watson" in the late 1990s. I would recommend "Trend Micro Antivirus" which is about $50/year.

Good luck! I know what a pain that computer viruses and malware can be.

Anonymous said...

Dr Watson is anti-virus? That makes sense. I read somewhere that it is a part of windows. I have Ad-Aware and Norton on my computer. Neither one detected a problem. Well, my fingers are crossed. Any idea how to get the CNN stuff stopped? I get about 20-30 a day. OMG! Thanks for your reply!

Anonymous Delawarean said...

I think it will eventually just slow down to a trickle. I think I counted ten or so in my inbox.

CNN has finally bothered to report about this spam as well.