We have all been familiar with the issue with WdSpoone and his very well respected blog, "Ma'am, Yes Ma'am". Fortunately he was able to overcome the issue and his blog has been relocated and back in operation.
Today I received an e-Mail that disturbed me. Here is what it said:
Dear
Failure to respond to this message within 14 days will result in copyright infringement accusation and standard legal procedures.
The message showed as coming from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and gave their phone number.
Since I have been involved with music and have performed in several bands over the years, I am very familiar with the RIAA. So, I check their own website to see if the phone number was legitimate. To my shock, it was.
Now, most of you know that the only thing you will find on our blog are pictures taken by us or pictures that we have posted with permission. The only exceptions have been some items that are 'public domain'. So I took this notification quite seriously.
So, I called the RIAA number. Their recorded greeting indicated that they have been to target of an Internet Spoof (their words) and the message should be disregarded. I left a message anyway.
The attachment that was included was an 'EXE' file and I am guessing that if opened it would attack your computer.
Maybe I am over reacting but I felt especially troubled by this threat. Fellow Bloggers, beware!
7 comments:
Thanks for the warning Ken, I haven't received anything like that yet, but if I do I won't open it.
Thanks Again
James
Ken! Thanks for the FYI!
Thanks Ken, looks like our nanny state is getting more nanny. It seems like we are getting more and more like the communists every day.
Dave
An exe attachment is definitely an attempt to con you into opening it and turning your machine into a Botnet zombie. Your machine would then be controlled by the Botnet perpetrators, who could use your machine for a variety of criminal activities, such as sending spam, conducting denial-of-service attacks on business systems while demanding ransom or "protection" money, or storing contraband such as stolen credit card numbers or child pornography.
Many of the botnets are run out of Eastern Europe, but the US is the biggest source of vulnerable machines because people don't take steps to protect them.
Really appreciate the warning, thank you.
Love,
Ronnie
xx
Yikes! That definitely seems like an attempt to inflict a virus or bot attack on you!
As far as warnings and what happened to "Ma'am Yes Ma'am"... my blog was deleted without warning by Google on the 14th of this month, apparently for "malicious javascript". I had just added a Google gadget to let users add my RSS feed to their iGoogle pages... so it was google's own script that triggered the automated "delete your blog" robot, it seems. Since Google doesn't seem to have a contact email for Blogger ANYWHERE, I've been begging for help on their forums and apparently someone is "reviewing my case" to see if I'm allowed to have my blog back, if possible. I'll add further updates at my old Yahoo Group as I can, but this is pretty sad to see everything can be wiped out at random without reason. It's one thing when you've actually done something "wrong", another when there's no actual reason or warning, or anybody to talk to about it... :(
Thanks for all the comments.
I did receive a return call from the RIAA, so its obvious that they are concerned, too. I was not at home at the time they called so they just left a message. They indicated that the message should be deleted and that it does contain a virus. They also reiterated that they did not send it.
Banjo-
Sad to hear about your blog. I hope you will follow WdSpoone in re-opening it. If you do, let us know.
Ken
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