Ryan Bell has just posted about some fishy virus-containing e-mails that he received, allegedly from Greg Call, Nate Oman, Daniel Bartholomew. It looks like there is a virus somewhere in the bloggernacle. This could be as simple as a bloggernacle participant using an infected machine that is sending virus e-mails with false “From” data. Or it could be a more serious issue. For the moment, bloggernacle participants are warned to be very careful opening e-mail purporting to come from Nate, Greg, or for that matter any bloggernacle participant. And as a general matter, bloggernacle readers (like all computer users) should at the very least have up-to-date virus protection on their computers.
If you don’t have virus protection, AVG provides its virus protection software for free for personal, home use.
You can download the install program from:
http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/
Yikes! I hope my laptop isn’t causing the problem. I have no reason to suspect it could be the problem (except for this post) but I’ll double-check it anyways. Thanks Ebenezer for that link.
Just so everybody knows: It wasn’t me.
BTW, the wump.info email address should not be working anymore as I’ve canceled my hosting with Vizaweb.com (no fault of theirs — just a decision I made). In the future I’ll be providing a gmail address and that is where I should be contacted.
Yes, I received an email this morning with a purported Yahoo return address of grasshopper_lds that had a .scr attachment (which I did not open).
“bloggernacle participants are warned to be very careful opening e-mail purporting to come from Nate…”
Participants should also be wary of accepting at face value comments posted by Nate, as they also may not be from who they claim to be from… (evil laugh…)
You all could get a Mac also. (grin)
Clark,
That ain’t no joke. The Mac is much safer. Here’s a useful link for security tips:
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-5482340.html
Just to add, browsing on a Mac is a much more enjoyable experience. Yes, Firefox on the PC improves ones browsing experience a lot over IE. But the Mac really is a very nice platform. I do the majority of my web stuff on it.
Like I stated in my post– I’m less concerned with the consequences of a virus– seems we’re all probably protected. I’m mostly just fascinated with the chain of events in which emails are seemingly randomly sent between members of the bloggernacle. Dave’s comment about receiving something from Grasshopper confirms it. Can anyone explain how or why this would be, besides a deliberate targeting of the bloggernacle (which I am tempted to dismiss out of hand, except that I can’t come up with any other explanation)? Dave, had you had any previous contact with Grasshopper on your email account before receiving that email? I’d never had any contact with Greg before, and only one long ago email to Danithew.
I get lots of email from various people. A lot of people prefer to write emails about posts rather than putting up public comments on a blog.