Lesson to Learn: Never open an anonymous e-mail
Especially if contains an attachment. Most likely, it contains a virus.
Just few minutes ago, I received e-mails from an unknown wlifer007 containing attachments. Out of curiosity (and of stupidity because I was already suspecting it contained viruses), I opened the e-mails, tried to download the attachments. Good thing Yahoo! Mail has built-in Norton Anti-virus, which has effectively detected the e-mail worm, named W32.Blackmal.E@mm!enc.
I tried to look for the worm definitions and here are what I found out:
W32.Blackmal.E@mm is a mass-mailing worm that attempts to spread through network shares and lower security settings. On the third day of every month it attempts to rewrite files with certain extensions with custom text.
The e-mails I have received contained this files: eBook.Uu, Video_part.mim, and Attachments00.HQX.
Here’s what I should have done:
1. I should have not opened the e-mail in the first place, because the sender was stranger to me.
2. I should have not tried to download the attachment, even if Yahoo! Mail has a built-in antivirus scanner because not all viruses can be detected.
3. I was already suspicious, so I should have followed my instincts.
4. I already had this lesson before and even posted tips about it, I should have followed it.
Good thing you caught the virus. It’s really hard to deal with it once it has infected certain files in your computer. Harder, if the infected files are the usual hidden files which, most of the time, one wouldn’t think of checking. That happened to my computer once and I had to reformat. Ugh.
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I could spot an email spam right away. With all the spam I’ve received in my life, how could I not?! lol
Besides, the email address, the subject and the body of the message is enough to tell if it’s spam or not. Good thing though you caught the worm, otherwise it would have been a big mess.