There also is a credit card, bank account and identity theft scam that has been going on for quite some time now. You get a note asking you to update your eBay, PayPal, Yahoo or some other account information, usually saying there has been a security audit or a routine review of accounts. The link in the e-mail takes you to a page that looks real, but is in fact, a fake page setup by thieves. Everything you enter will be used to steal your money, make fraudulent credit card charges or steal your identity (using the information you provide to open up credit accounts in your good name). The payment I sent someone for an Ebay transaction was stolen by thieves that had compromised the seller's PayPal account. He never admitted this, but I'm sure he fell victim to one of these scams and gave someone his user ID and password thinking he was signing on to update his account. He claimed I never paid him, but I had records that showed I had. Then he said he had to close his account due to other problems with the account (my guess is that he couldn't even sign onto it anymore). It took me nearly a year to finally get the money back. The worst case I ever heard of was one where the thieves sold the pigeon's house out from under them (using a fake home loan application page to collect the necessary information). Never use a link in an e-mail to go to a financial site. Regardless of what they say they do, the link can go anywhere the author wants it to. The only safe way to these sites is entering the real URL (or one you saved in your browser's favorites list). -- Andy At 08:35 AM 11/15/2003 -0500, you wrote:k

Yesterday I got an e-mail (to n3kn@arrl.net, alas) telling me to renew my PayPal account using a file attached to the e-mail. This made no sense, since I don't have any PayPal account. At first, I was worried that somebody might have set up a bogus PayPal account claiming to be me. However, this morning I see that the various antivirus software sites have noted this message and its attachment as a virus. If you get this e-mail and your antivirus software doesn't nab it, time to update the software!

We survived the high winds of the past few days with just one wire antenna damaged. That's annoying, but the good news is that we won't have to pay guys to rake the leaves this year. The leaves all blew completely away, and so they're somebody else's problem. Unless the wind shifts 180 degrees!

73 - Kay N3KN

Andy Oppel andy@andyoppel.com