I thought I could spot virus emails without much trouble.
Well I got nailed today by an email claiming that my package had been addressed incorrectly and that I should open the attachment to help reclaim the package from the post office.
I had just sold a camera on eBay and rushed to mail it after the snow storm.
So it was easy for me to imagine that I mislabeled the package.
As soon as I opened the attachment my virus protection AVAST – locked on it and cleaned it out.
Unfortunately I had sent it to the person who paid for the camera. I quickly sent him another email warning him of the spam.
This is the way it looks:
—–Original Message—–
From: U.S. Postal Service [mailto:u.s.postal.service@usps.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 8:28 AM
To: george@ctwatchdog.com
Subject: USPS Delivery Failure Notification
Hello!
Unfortunately we failed to deliver the postal package you have sent on the 19th of September in time because the recipient’s address is erroneous.
Please print out the shipment label attached and collect the package at our office.
United States Postal Service
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Just look at the email address with the .net suffix – the USUS has the .gov suffix. Easy to spot that this is fraudulent. We get too complacent – our eyes see what we expect to see. Look closely at all email, even from those you think you know.
You are SO right.
My husband just got hit as well. Any ideas how to fix it? The computer won’t even go beyond the screen where you pick Safe Mode.
I would take the computer to Staples or another national office equipment chain NOT BEST BUY
You get to format your computer Balbo. enjoy. its easy. just put in your windows install disk.
And if you haven’t backed everything up you have an empty hard drive
Sure, George, they also charge like $50 to just look at the thing. I’m sure if your older you must have a twenty something year old nephew or son or some relative that can do it for you in 5 minutes for free.
Do you know that for a fact? or you just taking a guess?
I just got one today… I had mailed out something as well and thought I’d screwed something up. I downloaded the attachment on my mac and when I opened it, it was a bunch of gibberish. It said it needed to be opened with windows. So far I don’t see anything happening… I deleted the file that I downloaded. Anything I should do on my macbook pro?
Same thing happened to me. It completely wiped out everything on my computer! I’m beyond ticked off right now. I’m taking mine in today to see if anything can be done. I opened it in safe mode and nothing; just the same emptiness as when I run it normally.
I got this and I was suspicious because I hadn’t mailed anything. The e-mail address had the .gov address so it looked totally legit. Fortunately since I hadn’t mailed anything I knew it had to be a virus and didn’t open the attachment but it concerns me that they were able to use the .gov suffix.
The one I got did have the .gov suffix. I saw nothing suspicious in the e-mail address.
Actually, it is USPS.COM, Not .GOV or .NET In fact, I just got the infected email from info@usps.gov I however didn’t get infected because I thought it was fishy seeming how I haven’t mail anything in a year and the email has an EXE file…
Hello Steve,
I receive that mail today coz i’m expecting parcel today and it was really delayed and the due date mentioned on the email is exactly the same as my parcel i downloaded the zip file but became suspicious when i saw a lot of recipients so i google it and found out it was a scam, will the i be infected with the virus after downloading it eventhough i did not open the zipfile? so far nothing is happening on my computer. Thanks
What I find interesting is people are opening the email attachment without wondering how USPS go ahold of their email address in the first place. My sympathy to those who have been infected. Hopefully you have been backing up your data and kept the install disks for all of your software. My policy has always been “once infected, always infected” and I do a complete harddrive wipe. Just because McAfee/Kaspersky/Norton says it has quarantined or fixed it doesn’t mean it hasn’t missed a key-logger and now the tards who wrote the virus are logging your keystrokes and getting your various account informations.
This one almost got me too.
But the email mine came from is info@usps.gov
I was expecting a package not sending one, thats the only way I wouldn’t have fallen for it.
I received the one which had the .gov extension. I didn’t think anything about it because I actually did mail something on the day it had in the email. I did put my email in to receive an electronic copy of the signature conformation so I really didn’t think twice about how they received my email address. I attempted to open the zip file but it didn’t seem to open. Nothing has happened to my computer as of yet. Should I be worried? I ran virus scan this morning and it didn’t come up with anything.
what kind of anti-virus program are you running? I would get a free copy of AVAST and also use that
Tsuchida you’ve hit the nail on the head! HOW would the postal service, FedEx or UPS or any other delivery service, send an email to me if I didn’t give them my email when I sent the package?! We’ve become complacent and reliant upon our antivirus software. We’ve got to use common sense if we’re going to avoid being scammed or having our hard drives attacked by marauders,
re: the “.gov” question:
The website for the United States Postal Service is http://www.usps.COM – they don’t actually have the “.gov” suffix. The Postal Service is not technically a full government agency – they receive no tax money from the federal government (although Congress has control over them) and they’re actually semi-autonomous. It’s weird – the USPS is expected to be self-funded, yet Congress won’t even let the Service create its own cost-cutting measures, like deciding on its own which days it should deliver mail. SO strange.
But anyway, yes, we do have to be more vigilant in what we read…
This virus puts an hidden attribute on all folders and menus. you can look at your hard drive from another computer via a network and save the files that need to be saved. This virus hits even with Norton fully up to date. I would suggest after retrieving your files, do a total format and reload. and NEVER buy Norton Antivirus.
wow-i got 1 of these, too. the from field just says United States Postal Service. i tried to download the attachment but luckily i couldnt. i dont remember what the error msg said when i tried to download the attachment, but it gave no indication that it was a virus. i have norton antivirus.
i dont see how i could have told that this was some kind of scam. there was nothing flakey looking in the from field-just USPS. but my computer seems fine. i’m no computer genius, that’s for sure, and have little way of detecting a phony email by the sender’s address. and, in this case, with yahoo email, i did not have a senders address other than USPS.
my question is-who would do this and why? does anyone ever figure out who generates these malicious viruses?
is there anything i should do to safeguard my computer besides the antivirus thingy? as i said, i’m the antithesis of a computer whiz and probably wont understand it anyway.
and, just to rant a little bit more and avoid doing anything remotely productive- its annoying when people imply that youre a moron if you are not proficient in the area of computers. it is a skill held by few and is mostly populated by pretenders who try to put other people down as being stupid. an extensive knowledge of computers is no indication of intelligence any more than an extensive knowledge of mollusk reproduction. so, stop trying to lord it over people when they have made an understandable mistake. [i have 2 ‘computer geniuses’ in my family, but when push comes to shove, they barely know more than i do.
PS-i’m still waiting for a pkg from USPS that was sent after this virus thing.
Michele: I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Like almost all viruses, this is a Windows virus, thus doesn’t affect Macs.
Stephanie: Forging headers in an email is easy to do for those so inclined. The .gov address is not proof that it comes from the government. Indeed, many viruses look like they come from people you know.
Vic: You should be okay since you didn’t open the attachment.
Tsuchida: I think some of your fears are unwarranted. a) This is a destructive virus. Data-stealing viruses don’t announce their presence. b) Once a commercial virus scanner detects a virus, it’ll make sure it stops it in its tracks.
d_mo: The postal service makes their money because they’re a government-enforced monopoly. Once the government took away Bell Telephone’s monopoly, the price of long-distance calls came down drastically. The postal service has been providing six days a week mail delivery for over two hundred years. Usually things become more efficient as time goes on, but the postal service is now claiming that it can’t do what it had been doing for centuries. Real simple: tell the USPS that if they stop six-days a week service, they’ll lose their government-enforced monopoly. Bet they’ll stop pushing for five-days a week only delivery pronto.
dummy: One other clue I had was that the email referred to the USA Postal Service. It is the US Postal Service (USPS), not the USA Postal Service.
Most viruses of this sort are created by teenage boys or young men, just for the challenge. Sometimes they do catch the authors, and if they’re adults they go to prison for a couple of years. Back up your data at least monthly. I agree that it doesn’t mean you’re a moron if you’re not computer savvy, though a lot of geeks seem to think so. To confuse a lack of knowledge on any particular subject with stupidity says more about the intelligence of the confused person than it does about the person with less technical experience. (And, by the way, I have an M.S. in Computer Science.)
I’m also wondering what version of Windows Balbo and others who were affected badly have. Windows Vista and later are more secure in that to perform certain kinds of operations you need to click a special button on an administrative window that pops up. You wouldn’t expect that a simple postal label would need administrator rights, so you wouldn’t click OK on the special window.
This is clearly another case for improving public education in America. You don’t have to know anything about technology to spot the USPS notice as a hoax. Does no one in this country know how to read and write? Check it out. Would the Post Office or any other legitimate business or government entity use “Hello!” as the salutation in an official notice? It gets worse. What’s wrong with “the postal package you have sent?” Anybody? My favorite part is that the recipient’s address is “erroneous.” Go ahead and look it up. It’s not quite synonymous with “incorrect” or “wrong,” either of which would have been a better choice. Using a thousand-dollar word in place of a plain, old everyday word and using it incorrectly is the hallmark of both non-native speakers and poorly educated hucksters. If poor grammar and stilted language weren’t jarring enough to get your attention, have you ever heard the term “shipment label” before? Clue: It’s “shipping” label. If you missed all that, then there’s probably no reason to explain why “shipment label attached” should have read “attached shipping label.” If you didn’t notice the odd address and didn’t bother to read the message, or worse yet, if you did both and still opened the attachment, have you at least learned something?
My husband got the same thing in his email but it had said that we had the package and since we had some family sending us stuff in the mail lately he opened it. AUG caught it as soon as he opened the email, yes no download was needed all he did was open the email.
But I have always believed to keep my computer with lots of protection, the free stuff works just as good as the ones you have to buy. {after so long of people wanting to download stuff on your computer and catching viruses teaches you to protect your system} The virus is sitting in avg right now but I haven’t found a way to delete it yet. Once I know more I’ll repost but right now I’m thinking getting a hold of a windows cd may be the best thing.
Just got this myself. Same content, different date.
Just got one tonight. I had mailed packages and bills on the date they listed. My mac downloaded but would not open in mac only open in my windows parallel. My parallel opened and asked to run twice but could not run the file when I clicked it, so I closed out parallel. At this point I was suspicious so I quickly went to the USPS website and saw the notice of fraud. So I quick deleted the email, the downloaded file on my mac and deleted my parallel desktop. I changed passwords galore for all my personal online accounts. So far my Mac is running fine. I have changed my firewall protection to the max on my Mac as well. Anyone know of anything else I can do to check/enhance the safety of my Mac and my personal info??
Got the virus yesterday. I was expecting something from usps, where i did leave my email….Virus is extremly high-risk. Had to erase my drive….even with my bitdefender fully updated!!!