Important: Emails from BB & Viruses

Buffy Summers

Buffy Summers

Yataro
Staff member
Joined
Nov 20, 2001
Messages
35,079
Location
The City of Angels
Sineya
Hey all - I noticed a bunch of bounced emails and some others in my email account that appear to have been sent from buffy-boards.com. However, we did not send them.

One I noticed was from jack@buffy-boards.com, a lot of the subjects seemed to be Hi or Test.

Anything sent from the boards to you all would come from buffysummers@buffy-boards.com or faith@buffy-boards.com most likely, and we do not have the option to send attachments in our emails.

So the long and short of it is, if you get something that appears iffy from us and it has an attachment, best to just delete it.

This is not an usual thing to have happen, and since the folks at vbulletin posted about it (and understand it better than I do) I thought I would post their explanation of it:

Emails, Spam, Worms, whatever.
During the last two days, i'm getting a lot of emails, containing viruses, or the other way round, some are sending a mail at vbulletin.org claiming, we are infected.

Most of the time those answers are to email accounts like john, anna, hacks, support or sometihng like this @vb.org.
We want to inform you, that none of these account really exists, it's just someone manipulating the header, to claim they are someone at vbulletin.org.
Click to expand...

So that goes the same for buffy-boards 🙂

This might be the most confusing post I've ever written - sorry!
 
Dont worry, I understand - lol!
I think I got one today, and I checked it and it said it had a virus, but I deleted it, it didnt say it was from here or whatever, but it might be connected to this.
I think Im babbling...
 
No, TMS, you are not babbling 🙂 It's the same virus I've been getting via e-mail. Just never open an attatchment from someone you don't know, and make sure you verify that a person you know sent you an attachment when it does come from a familiar e-mail. This thing goes into an infected computers address book and clones their e-mail address, so be extra careful about what attachments you open.
 
Thanks for letting us know.

I must say though, I never open attachements like zip, exe or anything alike, certainly not comming from adresses I don't recognize. It has kept me safe from mail worms.
 
Why do people send out viruses, it annoys me so much, and especially from such a grand place like this.
 
Here's another thing I used to worry about.

It's possible to set a virus with techniques other than email attachments.

I haven't heard of anyone doing this through a message board yet, but it would be easy enough to do, and it's only a matter of time.

What you would do would be to send a message to a member in an email spoofed to appear as if it came from the administration of the board you belonged to.

It would tell you of some sort of problem, or give some sort of an offer, and advise you to click on a link.

When you click on it it would take you to a web page where malware could be placed on your system through Active X, or a Window exploit a la Cool Web Search.

These kinds of methods of spreading malware are already out there. Spyware companies for one use them. Some viruses masquerade as a windows update you have to click on to install from an email. These kinds of exploits are being used every day, although not as yet through the message board technique I described (as far as I know).

It's possible to be ready for them. Here's some advice.

If you use Internet explorer set your Active X to disable or prompt in Security Options.

A better idea would be to not use Internet Explorer, but there are some sites (such as gaming sites and the Windows Update page) that require Active X.

What I do is I use 3 browsers (Opera, Firebird 7, and IE).

I have Opera set up for high security protection. It doesn't allow Active X. I set it to disallow javascript and popups.

I use Opera to check out dodgy sites and links.

I use Firebird 7 for general web surfing. It doesn't allow Active X or Popups by default.

Personally I only use IE to check for Windows Updates. Windows updates need Active X.

It's a good Idea to update Windows for security patches on a regular basis. Windows vulnerabilies are often exploited to put nasties on your machine.

Next make sure your Antivirus Scanner, is up to date with the latest definitions. I recommend AVG. It's free.

Antivirus programs do not always offer good protection against Trojan Horses. There is a new free, updateable trojan scanner available called a2. It's new, so I don't know how good it is.

Another good piece of advice would be not to use Outlook as your email client. Outlook exploits just keep appearing.

Also set your email client so that it doesn't allow Rich Text.

This might seem like a lot of trouble to go to to protect yourself against an imaginary email exploit, but it will do much more than than that. It will protect you against many of the bad things already out there on the internet.

In the meantime the previous advice concerning being careful when opening email attachments is good advice.
 
Good info 🙂

Also, we would never need you to go to some other site (that I can think of) so just be cautious when you get an email from us that isn't about board updates or downtime lol
 
Excellent advice N4H - I would add that a firewall program seems to be a must-have in these paranoid times. Zone Alarm is free and I've heard good things about it. From what I've seen it's as good as Norton (which is the one I have). It should offer protection against stuff which might slip past a virus scanner.
 
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