EFM receives thousands of emails everyday. We see just about everything including all the spam and virus attacks being sent out via email. You need to be on the defensive, and remember that there are thousands of people from all over the world thinking up new ways to annoy, terrorize and steal. Frankly we are sick of it but because of the large amount of people contacting us and the high profile of EFM our spam filters are not 100% effective for us. The filters loose important emails from real users trying to contact us for information, casting calls and so forth. This requires us to go through our spam and junk emails every day to pick out missed communication. So we have decided to fight this scourge. Spammers and people who send out viruses are worldwide and constantly coming up new and innovative ways to fool us in order to crash our computers, sell us needless products and try to elicit ways to steal our money through Bank and Paypal scams. EFM has collected spam emails and we have decided to publish and unveil these crooks, so in the future we will post the scams and spams as they arrive in a effort to help you protect yourself from these people bent on destruction and annoyance. Scams: VIRUS- There are emails coming in that have .pdf files attached to them, the pdfs are titled all sorts of subjects from invoice, income_report, company-events and even some with your name. Don’t be lured onto opening them. If you do not know the sender and you are not expecting anything then delete it. Another test is to check the email address it is coming from. Not the displayed email address but the actual email address that is hidden initially when receiving an email. VIRUS - There are virus emails going around that say your family member, school-mate, neighbor, is sending you an ecard. To view your card, you have to click on a link that takes you to a web site with an embedded virus. Delete them. They use displayed email addresses that appear to be form hallmark or antiquepostcards and just about everything you can imagine, but again, this is only the displayed email address, not the real email address it is coming form. In almost ALL CASES these email address are not real, if you try to send to them you will receive a unable to deliver email back. Theft of your money scam - There are hundreds of bank emails purporting to need your information or login because they are changing the website, taking a survey or blocking your use of the bank web site, this is a SCAM to get sensitive information in order to steal your money. Delete them and in doubt, do not clink on the links, call your bank personally and ask them questions. Your bank will NEVER send you an email asking you for sensitive information. Note: These scams are pretty good, they create a web site home that mirrors your real banks web site to get you to put in your user name and password, pin number, account number and so on.. The web site is a mirror duplicate of your banks web site, but do NOT be fooled. Never click on the links and always call your bank before you provide any information to anyone. Paypal theft scam – thousands of emails are circulating our inbox with paypal notices, from your account has been blocked to you sent money to some unknown person to an unauthorized email address has been added to your account. These people are trying to steal your money. Do not fall for it. If in doubt call or visit the real paypal website to check. Spammers: There are hundreds of emails coming in that offer drugs and pharmacy items. These are spammers trying to sell you drugs at discounted prices. Some of these drugs are tainted and sold by shady companies. Do not buy from them. Viagra and sexual stimulants emails are sent out by the thousands in hopes that they will get even a small percentage buying their products. Obviously there are a number of people that do buy and or visit the web site. If they did not the spammers would not go to so much trouble to send out millions of emails. Spammers by the droves are sending out emails to buy stocks, again if people deleted these emails the companies would eventually stop their harassment because no one would respond. -------------------------------- It is of our opinion that what will happen in the future as a result of all this junk email and scamming is that it will cost us money to send out emails. This is of course is outrageous and we the public will suffer because of others abusing the system. The resulting charge will be used to to make the process for spammers and scammers expensive and less likely to bombard us with useless emails. Help stop spammers and scammers by learning to identify and delete their emails. Do not become a victim – help fight this creeps and perps.. Do not buy from emails that are spamming you and never open any attachment from anyone that you do not know. Do not click on links that take you to unfamiliar web sites. Web pages can have embedded viruses then will infect your computer. And be SURE to install a good virus program. Even with a good virus program, practice not opening any attachments or going to unfamiliar web sites to keep your computer safe and secure. Here is a great web site to get a terrific and free virus program. It scans your email for viruses and checks your system. They offer FREE basic protection. But be advised that is does not filter all viruses such as attachments including this new virus we see that we are seeing where a .pdf files is attached http://free.grisoft.com/ If anyone else knows of a scam or virus circulating, let us everyone know. If we stick together we can help combat theft and the damage of our computers
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