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September 22, 2006

EMAIL Hell - Verified by Visa Europe

by Ferdinand T Cat

Today Bruce receivd a rather alarming EMAIL. It purports to be from Visa Europe, and states that Bruce's credit limit has been changed.

This sort of thing is typical of a phishing attack. Messages like this are constantly arriving purporting to be from a bank, or from Paypal or eBay, warning you about a problem with your account and directing you to a phony URL where you will be asked to enter information they can use to steal your identity. The URL in the Visa Europe EMAIL, however, is for a domain owned by Visa International, so it is probably legitimate.

What raises an alarm bell about the EMAIL is that it directs you to look at an attachment, and the attachment is an EXE file contained in a ZIP file. A real attachment would be at least a text file and at most an HTML file. For that reason, I suspect the EXE is an attempt to install a virus or spyware, even though Norton Antivirus does not detect anything.

So, continue to be vigilant, and suspect everything. Even if something doesn't have the standard characteristics of fraudulent EMAIL, it could still be dangerous.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


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