I answered:
'Re "desktopdating", I am already on facebook, and I'm not keen on joining another "social network".'
She wrote back:
Sorry about that...
I had a friend who sent me this network. I opened the email, hoping to find a message from her, and it sent mails to all my addresses, including some serious business contacts!
Probably the same thing happened to her friend. I didn't happen to me, probably it's geared to Windows and Outlook like is usual. (Update: apparently not this time. My friend has a new Mac. She's using yahoo email on their site, via Safari. Ooops.)
I've looked up the site, it's no networking site, it's just porn links [update: wrong, that's desktopdating.com, the mail refers to desktopdating.net, which seems more legit. One more reason for text-only emails, you can see where links lead.]. So this is a spamming virus, I am guessing. (Probably not designed to do damage to the machine, but to spam.)
Update sep 8: I got the same mail again from my girl friend today.
I told her, and she answered:
I've got the same email again as well. This time I did not enter to it, so I don't know what else I can do? How to stop this mambo-jumbo nonsense ?
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It is unclear to me how this "spam virus" could work with your friend's Mac if she is reading her email via Safari on Yahoo's site. That would require something very sophisticated, not only affecting Safari, but also a supposedly secure site like Yahoo.com.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly. It's all very strange.
ReplyDeleteNow, she is not a gear-head, so I don't have too many details. But it seems to be a fact that everybody in her address book got mailed an invite without her action.
(I got three, since she has three email addresses for me.)
I'm not a Mac user, but I can say that there's a lot of very sophisticated malware out there these days, and it's quite conceivable that it could take over your address book listings and use the addresses to send out spam - or maybe something worse. Just reminds all of us that we need a good security program even if we think we're "safe" and don't need one. The bad guys are just as smart as the good guys, and they are proving it every day. So we should all cover our asses and not trust to luck or the fact that a Mac isn't as likely to get hit as a Windows PC. That used to be true, but not any more.
ReplyDeleteCheck out ThreatFire or TrojanHunter 5 or Avast 4.8 or all of the above...
Definitely another reason to use Thunderbird and Firefox, and leave the Microsnot applications on the side of the road to die, fry, and blow away.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the lady in question has a worm (well, her computer does) that wants to replicate. Time to virus scan in detail, friends.
Another vote for Thunderbird. I have never had anything like this happen and Tbird stops anything that attempts anything weird. Besides, I'm on Linux and close to 100% of everything malware related just doesn't affect me. I never worry about these things.
ReplyDelete"Definitely another reason to use Thunderbird and Firefox"
ReplyDeleteFYI, I use Firefox and I received quite a few of these desktopdating invitation email in yahoo accounts recently.:-(
Forgot to mention, I use a MAC too...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteSo it does look like it's related to the yahoo site, not the browser.
I use Mac. 7 hours ago, in Safari browser and to my gmail account - had invite to desktopdating.com - allegedly from a friend who is also on gmail. So doesn't seem like yahoo only.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I did open email but did not click anything else. SO FAR, pray, I know a contact in my gmail account has not had an email from "me" inviting to desktopdating.com.
The way these spams work is a user clicks on the spam, and it will ask them to create a profile. In that process, the user is asked for their email / password, so the site can invite their contacts.
ReplyDeleteMost people don't think, and just give out the email address / password at this point. After this, the site can log into the user's email account and grab all the contacts, and send out the spam on their own.
So if you did this, the first thing to do is to change your email password! Then never again give your email / password to a 3rd party social networking site!