Went to my Yahoo email inbox. Saw an email from “carneyl” with the subject = “[none]”.
I was expecting an email from a friend of a friend who I did not know so I thought maybe this was it. But the instant I clicked it open I noticed it was like 160K big.
“Uh-oh” I thought.
It took something like 5 to 10 solid seconds to open – longer than usual for what turned out to be an utterly blank (textless, imageless, linkless and attachmentless) message. I sent it to the trash and deleted it.
But what gives? What the hell was it? Could I have downloaded some virus or other crap just by opening the email (remember, there was no attachment)?
In addition to Ad-Aware and Spybot to remove spyware, I would add a third tool that prevents spyware from installing in the first place: SpywareBlaster
Sounds like it for sure. Try the online scan, but your best bet is to purchase Norton antivirus or something similar and let it run all the time to actively scan files that you execute.