This week I wasn’t planning on writing about Facebook; nevertheless, a new and devious problem has popped up.

I, apparently along with millions of others, have been getting emails that appear to be from Facebook.  These emails have a subject line of, “updated account agreement” with an authentic looking verification number.   It has an attachment and basically states, “Due to Facebook policy changes, all Facebook users must submit a new, updated account agreement, regardless of their original account start date.”  It goes on to say, “Accounts that do not submit the updated account agreement by the deadline will be restricted.”

For me the offending email went to a non-Facebook email account I have.  This was my first warning to ignore the email.  Next, which I have warned you about before, you should never open attached files that you are not expecting, so don’t unzip it.  Lastly, and the most obvious warning is that the unzipped file is an executable file (marked with the .exe extension).  NEVER EVER run an exe file on your computer if you don’t know exactly what it is…NEVER.

So basically, DO NOT follow the directions to unzip and run the agreement.exe file.  I have read several different descriptions on this agreement.  The scariest one states that the executable file is a variant of the “ZeuS banking Trojan“, a very nasty program.  Once run the program installs silently in the background of your system and waits for you to type in your banking logon information.  What happens when you do logon to your bank’s site?  It steals your information and sends the login info back to the bad guys.  Then they take your money…simply and quickly.  They now have full access to your bank accounts just as if they were you.

One day last week several Tech-news sites reported that over 6 million emails like this went out before lunch.

Along with this one, another Facebook phishing scam hit that asked you to logon to your Facebook account and change your password.  When you went to the linked site from within this email you would be taken to a very realistic Facebook login page.  If you entered your current username and password it would then take over your Facebook account.  This isn’t nearly as bad as the first one I mentioned but it may still cause you a lot of problems.  In this case you would most likely never be able to regain control your FB site.  They will have changed the password and your email account that was attached to FB and you are out of the picture.

Please folks I am tired of these attacks and tired of writing about them so let’s all listen up now.

Never open an attached file in your email unless you are waiting to get something from a known person/place.  Even if from a close friend!  Email accounts can be imitated just as if your friend sent something to you.  Next, no trustworthy company will ever ask you for your login information; whether it is a bank or online social network.

PLEASE be careful!  Once a mistake like this is made it may never be properly corrected.

Tags: bad guys, botnet, doyle, evil, facebook, newspaper column, phishing, Ron Doyle, sneaky, twitter, Zeus

Well more emails hit my inbox since the last column about my favorite sites to watch, Hollywood.com and TVGuide.com.  The most popular question was why I don’t use the Comcast.com site to get my TV listings.  OK, here you go.  I pay the minimal amount you can for cable.  Like I said before I don’t watch much TV.  Since I pay the smallest amount for cable possible I do not receive the TV Guide channel.  I can “watch” channel 17 (TV Guide)), cut the sound off to get rid of the loud static sounds and squint through the static on the screen.  Then I can make out most of what is on at that time.  But I don’t want to mess with my volume controls and I also don’t like to squint. Online I can look at any time during today or many days in the future.  I like that.

Now let’s get on with a look at another of my favorite sites.  I use Major Geeks (majorgeeks.com) for finding and trying out new freeware programs.  For instance, I originally learned about “Eraser” by Heidi Computers Ltd. (a great total file erasing application), AVG Anti-Virus program, KeePass Password Safe and a large number of others at Major Geeks.  By-the-way, try those out and see if you like them.  The price is really right…free!

While there you can search specific categories for software you are looking for and read a fairly comprehensive review of what the programs do.  I will warn you that although most of the software is free some of it is shareware and only allows you to try it for a short time period.  You then must pay to keep it.  Others are free; however, if you want the full grown version that will do more things you have to pay for an upgrade.  So, as in all things…caveat emptor. 

Next, I have a sneaky little site for you called, Jetable (www.jetable.org/en).  Here is how Jetable works.  Let’s pretend that you are signing up for something on the internet and they need your email address to verify that you are a real person.  This is required before your “membership” is complete.  If you are the least bit like me you don’t like giving out your address to everyone in the world because you know there is a good chance that it will generate hundreds of spam emails in the future.  Jetable provides you with a “throwaway” email address.

You can set Jetable to give you this throwaway for an hour, a day, a week up to a month before it stops working.  The address it assigned me was “gh15z77l3o3uf@jetable.com“.  So if you sent email to that address it would go to my actual email account for the one hour I set it up for after that it would never work again.

That is a great feature and the more you use the internet the more you realize how nice it is to use. 

Next week we will look at a few more interesting and hopefully helpful sites.

Tags: jetable.com, Ron Doyle, sneaky, throw away email, toss