Scareware
My mother-in-law runs a small craft shop (with lovely craft products, sold very cheaply and with good friendly advice ;) and her business relies a lot on the Internet. Queries come in via email, she has an online store and a website.
Yesterday she got sent an email telling her that due to some unsavory use of the Internet, she would be disconnected. The email had an attachment which was (pretending to be) some sort of log of her activities.
Now, the more savvy of us may think - scam. But she is not "the more savvy of us" and this email freaked her out. She imagined her Internet presence being shut down. And, of course, she was always careful about her browsing.
Fortunately for her, her ISP's antivirus recognised the attachment as being a trojan and deleted it. But she may have been stressed into opening the attachment to see what the accusations were.
I have written this post to tell people about this type of trickery and to just remind those out there that are maybe not so Internet savvy - NEVER open attachments that you are not expecting. If you are concerned about your Internet connectivity being taken away then contact your ISP directly.
And always have an up-to-date antivirus.
My mother-in-law runs a small craft shop (with lovely craft products, sold very cheaply and with good friendly advice ;) and her business relies a lot on the Internet. Queries come in via email, she has an online store and a website.
Yesterday she got sent an email telling her that due to some unsavory use of the Internet, she would be disconnected. The email had an attachment which was (pretending to be) some sort of log of her activities.
Now, the more savvy of us may think - scam. But she is not "the more savvy of us" and this email freaked her out. She imagined her Internet presence being shut down. And, of course, she was always careful about her browsing.
Fortunately for her, her ISP's antivirus recognised the attachment as being a trojan and deleted it. But she may have been stressed into opening the attachment to see what the accusations were.
I have written this post to tell people about this type of trickery and to just remind those out there that are maybe not so Internet savvy - NEVER open attachments that you are not expecting. If you are concerned about your Internet connectivity being taken away then contact your ISP directly.
And always have an up-to-date antivirus.