[BC] Russian spy software

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Here is some info about a new phishing scam.

I installed a new phone service and DSL Internet connection
at my new office in Danvers, MA. Everything was working okay,
albeit somewhat slow compared to the cable modem I have at my
home office. I had purchased a cheap Dell Inspiron from Wall
Mart to use for non-serious stuff like writing letters and
answering Email.

Yesterday I got an Email, supposedly from Verizon, to download and
install their "security suite." I thought nothing of it and did
what I was told. Wow! It slowed the computer to a crawl and while
troubleshooting I connected up a multiple port switch so I could
use my Linux machine to see what all the new network activity was.
It was sending data to Russia!

That’s when I realized that there was NO WAY that Verizon could
have known what my long-time Email addresses were! I had been duped
into installing some Russian spying software that was probably ready
to relay any credit-card information if I used one on-line.

I just got through rebuilding the system from scratch by installing
a floppy disk, booting DOS, writing the first few thousand hard disk
sectors to zero, then reinstalling everything from the DVD I got
with the machine --whew.

This makes me wonder how many others on-line have that Russian
spying software installed!

http://phishingscam.org/2008/11/02/russian-phishing-scam/

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/