Friday, July 29, 2011

That wrong transaction on your credit card could cost a lot more

Latest email message scam tells you a hotel has erroneously charged your credit card account.
The messages started popping up in recent days and there are already hundreds of variants on the same theme: A hotel wrongly charged a credit card number and the victim is supposed to fill out an attached form to process the refund.
"Please see the attached form. You need to fill it out and contact your bank for return of funds," read one such message, titled "Hotel Breakers Palm Beach made wrong transaction."
The 'refund' form is actaully a nasty Trojan horse virus that attempts to install bogus antivirus sofware on your computer, which provides annoying alerts to phantom security problems on your computer. It then keeps pestering you until you pay some money to buy a phony antivirus product.

The trick is - of course - not to open the attachment in the first place - or use your anti Virus software. Also make sure your anti-Virus software is up to date, as spammers change the code on their viruses regularly to circumvent your protection software.

Source: PC World

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