If I Had Clicked the Email, A Trojan Would Have Invaded My System. Don't Click This Email!

Gary North

May 28, 2012

A site member on GaryNorth.com described what happened to him. He had been hit by a virus. Here is what he reported.

I received an email from Amazon and it looked like the real thing. It showed that someone in Ghana had bought about $53 worth of stuff on my account. It looked like a standard email invoice/confirmation and had a link back to the Amazon site to my account. Since I have an account with them, I thought it was legitimate and I clicked the link to see what was going on with the account.

That's when the "fun" began. I started getting messages from my anti-virus software that it had detected a virus threat and treated it but the threat kept reappearing with a slightly different file names. It also detected a couple of other threats and took care of them. I was still having problems.

Just to be sure, I ran the Microsoft Malware program (http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx). Since I was not sure where the threats were located, I did a full HD deep scan. It took almost three hours but it did find and neutralize two more severe threats.

Just be vigilant and know that these spammers/hackers are getting very sophisticated and beware. This one sucked me in and cost me about 24 hours of time to correct the problem.

Another site member responded.

Thanks for sharing. I've had 4 Trojans removed in the last ten days or so. It really seems to be accelerating. I have found Trend Micro the best after trying Norton, MacAfee, Antispyware, and Avira. Only Trend removed the trojans quickly without any input from me.

//www.garynorth.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=1&ThreadID=28704

I immediately recognized this. Earlier in the morning, I got a notice from Amazon about a $66 payment for a Kindle version of The Hunger Games. I did not understand this. Why would anyone pay $66 for a digital book?

What saved me was that I did not click any link to find out what this was all about. I decided to ask my wife if she had ordered this book. She said no. I put it out of my mind.

I downloaded the free Microsoft program:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx

I ran it. It told me that there was nothing suspicious on my hard drive. It's clear that my refusal to click that notice saved me.

If you get such an invoice from Amazon, do not click the link.

For verification, see any of these articles on it: www.bit.ly/FakeInvoiceTrojan. Others say it's malware. Either way, don't click it.