A new spam email, ignored by Outlook’s spam filter, is supposed to have a spreadsheet file for Excel.
A new spam email is arriving in Inboxes, trying to trick Excel users into opening it.
This email isn’t detected by the Outlook 2007/2010 spam filter (latest update and configured to ‘High’) so it sits in an Outlook Inbox waiting to catch the unwary. It’s also not detected by the related anti-phishing feature.
Just delete this message or anything like it that arrives. Eventually Microsoft will update the Outlook spam filter to properly deal with this latest nuisance.
Here’s what it looks like:
From: a person supposedly via the LinkedIn service.
To: an email address farmed from various sources. All the version’s we’ve seen have an email address only with no name. The message is ‘Blind Carbon Copied’ BCC to many addresses so your email address probably isn’t the one on the ‘To’ line
Subject: ‘Summary of payments’
Attachment: a ZIP file called ‘2010 Financing.123.zip’. The zip file actually contains a program file (.exe) which is presumably something that intends no good to us or our computers – so we’ve left it alone. Definitely do NOT open the zip file, let alone open anything inside the zip file!
Body: it uses the email address name on the opening line.
See Also
- LinkedIn fake messages
- Windows Live ID confirmation – bogus!
- Fake emails missed by Outlook
- Making Outlook ‘Office Watch’ friendly
- Fake HR emails with virus
- Do you have the latest Junk Email filter?
- When Outlook doesn’t detect a spam message
- Outlook isn’t catching ‘CNN.com Daily Top 10’ phishing trap
- Outlook can’t detect bogus Security Bulletins
- Why spam filters aren’t perfect
- Where could that message be?
- The Curse of email addresses
- Quickly marking spam in Outlook 2003
- Anti-phishing feature for Outlook 2003 in SP2
- Is Microsoft filtering Office Watch email?