Michael Sullivan wrote:
I've got a small problem. Last week I received in my
non-espersunited.com email account an email from someone I don't know
with an .exe file as an attachment. Naturally I assumed that this was a
virus, and wrote back to the email address it was from informing them
that they had a virus. I've received several similar emails on through
the week, most were unique but all followed the same format: One line
of text and then the attachment link, usually a .exe or a .zip file. I
haven't opened any of them, but in the past couple of days I've begun
seeing them in my espersunited.com email accounts. I wasn't too worried
about it until this morning, when I received a message from another SMTP
server saying that my mail was undeliverable to some person's email
account. I looked at the message sent and it was indeed from me, but
the message body held the same one line and thesame EXE/ZIP file
attachment as the ones I'd received from multiple sources. I use
evolution as my email client. Could I be infected with this virus?
No; this is most likely a "joe-job" (http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/J/joe-job.html)
By replying to the original email/attachment, you let the spammer know that your email address was valid, and therefore a good candidate for them to use in a joe-job.
--
-John (john@xxxxxxxxxxx)
