Every so often, I get odd emails. OK… Often, I get strange emails. Here’s one of them, and I’m not sure what I did to deserve it:
That’s the entire text of the message. Glad they’re happy with me. 
Not all email from total strangers is spam. Sometimes they just mistype an email address and the mistyped version is valid (but not for the intended person).
I got someone’s faculty-mixer pix and an attorney’s summary of countersuit options for a charged motorist.
I’m getting about eight emails that are returned to me with an attachement that I didn’t send. Plus we get an email from admin saying our email is up for renewal, and open the attachment to find out how to renew it. The returned emails are not from me, but it’s getting annoying, as the email originates out of Holland. The renewal I don’t know where it comes from. But I’d rather someone just said thanks to me instead.
I forgot to say that this isn’t spam as it comes from someone within the company. I’m suspecting they just grabbed the wrong name from the address book.
Actually, it sounds like you got a virus infected e-mail…
Hopefully you didn’t open any attachments. These viruses lately make me ever so happy to be a mac user, as I am largely immune to viruses.
amen to that
For those who don’t know it yet, a typical behavior of current virii includes these tactics:
[ul][li]Faking the message, like creating one that says “unable to deliver,” but really isn’t a bounced one[]Spoofing either the sending or receiving address, or both; that is, the actual address is not the one displayed[]Including text that fools either the spam scanners or the recipient into allowing the message thru or reading it[/ul][/li]A common procedure for a virus is to collect email addresses from the infected person’s computer, looking at not only address books and past email, but also web pages recently visited and DOC, XLS, etc. files as well. Then two addrs are plucked from that list – one goes in the “from” field, one in the “to” field and the message is mailed out with the virus attached.
If you know all this, you won’t be confused anymore. Just be very suspicious.
Here’s one oddity I just got a few minutes ago. The header says “Use this patch immediately !”, it is properly addressed to me, and it says it is from “security@microsoft.com.”
The body of the message says, in entirety:
Attached is a file named “patch.exe.”
Do you think this really came from Microsoft? Hardly! Investigation thru Symantec reveals it is probably the dumaru.b worm. :eek:
How can you tell? You can’t, but a large dose of skepticism helps. I had not seen this particular virus before (it was first found on August 20, 2003) but it certainly had an aura about it, so I checked.
In the interest of fighting ignorance, the plural of “virus” is actually “viruses”.
Well, it turns out this wasn’t a virus, but just a nuttier than usual user of ours. They just wanted to call and thank me for getting something done for a coworker.
As they didn’t initiate the request, this is why I didn’t recognize their name.
Regarding viruses, our anti-virus forces are ever-vigilant. Our desktops get Norton AV updates pushed to them at every login, and all emails are scrubbed behind the ears with Trend Micro.
Maybe you just have an email that’s similar to someone elses?
Mine is a lot like some other people’s and I get their mail.
This reminds me of a series of funny emails I got a few weeks back. I’m sure it was an error of mistaken identity, as I have a very common name and use it for a couple of email accounts. The first email was from a young woman residing in the UK. I was one of a list of people she sent an announcement to regarding a recent move. Being one who is ordinarily polite, I replied, saying that I think I am not who she intended the email for. She wrote back, thanking me and asking me to forward the email along to her friend. 
The second email was an article about some guy in Idaho who died in a plane crash. Apparently, the sender mistook me for a mutual friend and sent it along. Unremarkable except for the last line in the article, a quote from the gentleman in question regarding dealing with local politicians: "It’s like mating elephants. Everything’s done at a high level; there’s a lot of grunting and groaning and it takes two years for results." Yes, I’m serious! 
I nearly injured something when I read that! That random email was SO worth reading.
Wonder if anyone on the boards here know these folks?
Not only am I getting spam with attachments, the attachments are 100kb or more. Of course I don’t open them, but I have to clear out my junk mail folder every few hours, or risk exceeding my account size. Grr.
Mine’s pretty boring, I got an email from a guy who thought I was his sister, so I emailed back telling him I wasn’t, yet he insisted on sending several more emails in the belief I was his sister, despite the fact I emailed back each time explaining who I was.
My husband checked his hotmail once after a long period of not reading it. In his inbox he found about seven emails, the first few long and detailed, the last few in increasingly angry tones berating the intended recipient for never replying. Of course, they were not intended for him. We felt awfully sorry for the sender, who was obviously furious at the intended recipient.
Once a relative forwarded something to me, typing in the number 20 instead of 29 in my address. I had to explain to her why I didn’t get the message! And somebody out there, who happened to choose almost the same addy I did, must have actually got the email. I wonder if he or she is going to read this post?
Check the extensions on your attachments. If it’s an exe, scr, pif, bat, com, doc, xls, ppt, mdb, I wouldn’t open it. Of course that list is not exhaustive.
As I’ve mentioned before, random chaps keep sending me pictures of them masturbating. Either someone’s out there in the clubs giving out my email address to guys they want to get rid of, or I’m on a “please send me a picture of you masturbating” list.