Strange E-mails

Dave Hirshberg · #1 02-24-2004, 10:10 AM

I got a couple of strange E-mails today. One from a Fixboat@aol subject warning with Text "somthing about you" and an attachment which I didn't open. Another marked Live well from a boatsboyer@aol .com. Telling me how my livewells should be round and painted grey? I've got no idea where or why I got them, I generally don't get much junk mail on boating subjects. Maybe they got my address from here or boatzone? Any thoughts?

ocuyler · #2 02-24-2004, 10:41 AM

The first one is almost definately a virus. The second is some person conserned with your "well" being. Assuming that your email is in your profile, you have to put up with a certain amount of that. Be sure you virus software is up to date. The other stuff you can choose to ignore. Welcome to 2004...

JohnS · #3 02-24-2004, 10:46 AM

Yup, I have an idea. It is most likely caused from some having an infected machine. The virus grabs an address book from someones machine and automatically sends out emails to those addresses. The "sender" name is usually not a real name, IE email address. It is one that "made up", in simple terms. When other open these emails, the virus grabs their address book and the cycle continues.

The way to protect yourself from such things is to, have your anti-virus up to date, make sure your operating systems has all the "patches" installed, and for the most part, have a firewall in your machine to stop unwanted traffic in and out of your computer. Also, there are programs out there that you can install to scan your machine for stuff that will try to automatically send out things from you machine, like tracking stuff that could be received in the form of cookies, etc. Ad Aware is one such scanning tool that is available off the web for free.

On that note, have a great day!

ScottM · #4 02-24-2004, 12:08 PM

Dave,
boatsboyer@aol is a guy on Cape Cod that refurbishes SeaCrafts and Seabirds. He emailed me the other day saying I had a nice boat and that he had one too. I replied to him asking who he was because he gave me the name of his business and phone number, but not his own name or why he was contacting me. We went back and forth a few times and he seems like a decent guy. I'm not sure if he's a member here though, which is strange since he restores SC's for a living.