[DM-MUG] Scam

[Bill Davis]

Unless you filled your email address into a web page form, I doubt it was a
scam to capture your email address.  Spammers have automated tools to surf
the web and harvest email addresses from web sites etc, plus get them from
the Outlook address book on Windows machines.   It's possible, but rather
doubtful that they'd use a scam like that to get a handful of addresses that
an add for free parrots would draw.  Too unusual a topic.   Now if it was
"free iPod", that's another story...

As to the picture downloading something bad to your computer, that's very
doubtful.  You aren't running Windows.   Such things don't really exist
except as "proof of concept" for the Mac if they exist at all.

There are some free virus checkers you can get for the Mac, but they really
just check for PC viruses so you don't spread them.   Search
VersionTracker.com for them.

Email spammers are now also just "guessing" at email addresess.  Yours is
rather unusual so that's doubtful in this case, but I get tons of spam
because I generally use my real name, and it's an easy to guess one.
Gmail's spam filter kills several thousand spam messages a week for me
because of that.

Most likely a spam scanner 'bot found your email address on some web page
somewhere or got it from some other source. Or someone vendor sold your
email address.  The latter is more likely.

 - Bill

On 8/28/08, Sharalyn <homeonthefarm at iowatelecom.net> wrote:
>
> I answered an ad on craislist for someone needing a home for free parrots
> today, and I'm pretty sure that its trick to get my email address because
> ever since I answered, I've been getting a spate of junk mail and they
> haven't answered to my response.  What's really scary is that there was an
> attached photo that I've opened. Do you suppose there is something bad
> about
> it that it has downloaded into my computer, and do you know any way I can
> find it?
>
>
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-- 
Bill Davis
5214 Meredith Dr.
Des Moines, IA 50310-2956 USA
(515) 270-6729 home
(515) 360-0445 mobile
(515) 281-7302 work
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