Watch out for Fake Email Messages From Online Retailers

I received an alert today from Symantec about a disturbing rise in the number of fake email messages that purport to be from legitimate online retailers. Apparently, these messages are sent via bulk-email to unsuspecting individuals. The emails state that an invoice for a recent purchase at the online retailer is attached, and that you should open it to verify your order.

When the email attachment is opened, the user’s computer is infected with a Trojan horse virus that allows an unknown party to take control of your computer and its Internet connection at a later time for any number of nefarious purposes.

While the download Trojan virus category is nothing new, this new socially engineered method of delivery is. Symantec has rated this threat as a level 3 (5 is the worst) – the first level three threat they have issued in some time.

If you receive an email from an online retailer such as Amazon.com, Buy.com, or any other company who you have not done business with recently, treat it as suspect. As always, we recommend you use Norton Anti-Virus to protect your computer from such threats. If you have Norton and it is up to date, the infected attachments will be removed from your email before it hits your inbox.

We issued a virus alert to our subscribers about this tonight. If you are not a subscriber to our email virus alerts, click here to become a virus alert subscriber.