By Claudia Lynch,
Benchmarks Online Editor
The virus writers and
scammers have been busy, as usual. Cataclysmic events seem to give
them extra motivation, however, as can be witnessed by the various
Tsunami-related items reported by
scambusters:
1. Phishing scams: fraudulent websites have been set up
pretending to
be legitimate tsunami relief organizations. These sites request
charitable donations, but in fact steal financial information and may
be
used for identity theft as well. Contributions go into the pockets of
the scammers.
2. Variants of the Nigerian fee scam: unsolicited email
(spam) is sent
with the supposed purpose of retrieving large amounts of money tied up
in areas devastated by the tsunami disaster.
3. Viruses and trojans: Spam is sent that includes photos of
disaster
areas or individual survivors, and these attachments contain computer
viruses.
4. Fee-based spam: unsolicited emails offer, for a fee, to
locate loved
ones who may be disaster victims.
We are not surprised by these scams since the same thing happened
right
after 9/11, and after every major natural disaster since then.
On a
happier note, McAfee VirusScan 8.0i
can now be
downloaded for FREE
from the UNT Antivirus site by all UNT students, faculty, and staff.
You can also purchase a CD from the software bookstore in the Student
Union for $3.00, if you prefer.
Please note:
McAfee VirusScan
can only be installed on
PC's running Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP
or Windows 2003 Server. It will
not run on PC's running Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME.
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