New form of internet fraud? I may be late to the party, but i almost

[hedgehog]

got caught today.

Here's the scam -

1. You get an email saying your credit card has been charged for some purchases. I was supposedly charged in British pounds for some computer ware.

2. The email doesn't tell you which credit card was charged. Presumably you check your accounts and can't find the charge.

Here's where the real scam kicks in:

the email has a link to the invoice. You may want to download the invoice and look at it so you can contact your credit card company with details. The problem is, the so-called invoice is an executable file. You open it, you'll get who knows what kind of virus installed.

[Skittles]

1. don't click on unsolicited email links

CALL them

[SheilaT]

2. I have a couple of times gotten

phone calls, that's right phone calls, NOT emails when some suspicious charges appeared on my account. In both cases the calls were triggered because I'd done some unusual purchases myself with the credit cards, so I could immediately say, they were legit.

I seriously doubt my credit card companies even have an email for me, especially since all of my accounts were opened in the distant dark ages before the internets.

[hedgehog]

3. To be clear - the email look like the typical order confirmation you might

get from a legitimate outfit like Amazon or Lands' End.

[RKP5637]

4. Yep! Indistinguishable from the real thing. n/t

[hedgehog]

5. Thinking it over - legitimate notifications generally give the last 4 digits

of the card used.

[RKP5637]

7. I never trust them anyway. I always log into the site and check it out. The ones

I get a lot are for paypal.

Yep, thinking about it, it seems the last 4 digits are always mentioned for credit card accounts.

[lolly]

6. Got a grey pop-up window the other day

Looked just like those official "login" boxes.

It said the computer had been locked and logged out and I needed to enter my administrative password to log in.

I don't even remember what it is, so I just tried closing the box, and everything went on as normal.

Clearly, the box was some sort of phishing expedition, either trying to gain access to my computer, or realizing that many people use the same password across various platforms, so one of my passwords might get them into my bank accounts, etc.

So--don't trust any "must re login" messages either.

[Lex]

8. clicking on an exe file is always highly inadvisable

unless you are intentionally loading software