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Author Topic: New Mimail Virus Poses as PayPal E-mail  (Read 888 times)

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Offline Mysterious Benefactor

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New Mimail Virus Poses as PayPal E-mail
« on: November 18, 2003, 11:02:37 PM »
Yet another version of the Mimail virus is on the loose, but this one has a twist: it poses as an e-mail from PayPal and attempts to trick recipients into surrendering their credit card data.

Read about it here.

(I actually received this over the weekend. But thankfully I was using Linux at the time and, considering I don't have a PayPal account, I deleted it as soon as I'd read the subject "Your PayPal account expires".)
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Offline Josette

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Re:New Mimail Virus Poses as PayPal E-mail
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2003, 07:59:47 AM »
This was mentioned on the CNN ticker today - saying that it asked for Social Security number and mother's maiden name!!  Even if one knowingly went to their site, let alone received a pop-up, I can't imagine giving out that sort of information!!!!
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Josette

Offline Mysterious Benefactor

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Re:New Mimail Virus Poses as PayPal E-mail
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2003, 07:19:12 PM »
I received another copy of this today - and once again I was luckily using Linux when I discovered it.

It would seem like the circulators of this particular virus are really counting on the cluelessness of some of its recipients to spread it. But considering that we haven't really heard much about Mimail (yet, anyway) maybe the average Internet user is becoming smarter than the Mimail writers count on them to be. Or maybe it was just a stupid choice on their part to try to spread it using a PayPal ploy - something a person who doesn't have an account with PayPal is not very likely to fall for...

But whatever the reason, it's nice to see the spreading of this particular virus *might* turn out not to be as bad as originally feared.  :)
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Offline Patti Feinberg

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Re:New Mimail Virus Poses as PayPal E-mail
« Reply #3 on: December 30, 2003, 01:23:58 AM »
This was mentioned on a.m. news today; not so much virus, as spyware/identity theft.
 [deal2] Yes... give us your information


grrrr

Patti
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What a Woman!
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