Free Laptop

[sue2white]

Tempting as it is!
I have been sent an email saying that if I forward it to eight people, I will get a free Ericsson T18 Laptop, but if I forward it to twenty (do I have 20 to forward to??) then I will get a free Ericsson R320 Laptop

What do you think??
Too good to be true?

Sue:confused:

[Geoffers]

Complete and utter load of squit.

As my grandfather told me "The only person who was ever conned was someone who thought they were getting owt for nowt."

[esdel]

Tempting as it is!
I have been sent an email saying that if I forward it to eight people, I will get a free Ericsson T18 Laptop, but if I forward it to twenty (do I have 20 to forward to??) then I will get a free Ericsson R320 Laptop

What do you think??
Too good to be true?

Sue:confused:

WEll there was a fascinating article on BBC News Site day before yesterday.
It said "Psychologists have discovered" that the older, more cynical and grumpy you get the clearer your thinking becomes!

Humm. Well, So what do I reckon?
On the FACE of it, as YOU select freely who to contact it can do YOU no harm (not as though you are telling the originator any personal details)
THEREFORE there must be something BAD within the message you are forwarding!

BUT you have ALREADY RECEIVED it
THEREFORE you are now infected!

Only if the evil-doer is VERY kind-hearted has he fixed it so ONLY people you contact get infected!

The other thing he may be after is CONFIRMATION that you EXIST (he bought the info for 0.0001 p and doubts you do exist- most such lists are made up for money-making above truth and accuracy: there is a huge market)

But HOW would he know you exist - he has not asked you to reply to him!
So INSIDE this awful message must be a gremlin that HAS ALREADY reported back to him that you are alive and also that you are a dead gift as regards being hoodwinked.

Again MAYE this "phone home" gremlin ONLY gets activated when YOU send a message out.

The whole idea is to get hundreds of thousands of home PCs shanghaied into being "robot slaves" that INSTEAD of working for you spend ALL their on-line time sending HIS messages. His idea here is to make money by staooping web sites working etc by overloading them with millions of messages per second (which he will follow up by "offering a service" to "prevent" this with the obvious implied threat!!!)

Sorry about this. I am sure the human craze-for-money is not the path to happiness.
Delete ALL such messages BEFORE reading them!
Some (wise?) folk ONLY open messages from people THEY KNOW (so you maybe did not open this one!) |hug|
esdel

[Ladkyis]

The thing is esdel that if you only open messages that come from people you know you could still find yourself in deep trouble because these days email addresses can be stolen and used.
I have been receiving messages from someone in my address book but they don't really come from them at all. the from address has been stolen and used to send out messages.
My advice is this.
Do not open attachments - EVER - unless you have been told that it is being sent and given the file name in a separate email.
If I receive a message with an attachment I will delete it and ask the apparent sender if they sent it could they tell me the file name and send it again.
I was caught once by an email that seemed to come from a friend and it infected my computer. (that machine is long gone now) Ever since then I have kept to the policy of simply deleting anything that has attachments and I never click on a link in an email unless I really know the sender. and even then I am very careful
Sue there is no such thing as a free lunch - and how will the sender know that you have sent the message to 20 people or 200 people. DELETE! delete! delete.

[esdel]

Yes, Ladkyis, I was trying not to be too negative. (for a change!)
For it is FAR WORSE.
Just because someone is you dearest most trusted friend does NOT mean their entire computer is malware free.
And if it is NOT, you may catch it (a virus after all)
What I dearly want to know is HOW can you tell if a source is trusty?
For example if it SAYS it is a vital update from Microsoft, HOW do you know.
It seems you cannot know and must RELY ON Microsoft.
Whatever next! Will need to change their spots to reliably STOP all their impostors, and within seconds of the first impostor message and
STOP their policy of auto-updates! I do not see how technically, nor ecomomically they can do that!
I simply don't want to say any more, casting more misery, but (unfortunately) I can imagine where it will all end.
esdel

PS You are right .exe files are worst of all, but NO attachment should be opened UNTIL you know exactly what it will do (or think you do!)

[Mona]

This "free computer" email has been circulating for years. I have had a few.
Google "free computer hoax", and a couple of sites have the history of it. Another variation is get a free airline ticket from BA!

As for viruses....get a Mac :D

[pipsqueak]

As for viruses....get a Mac :D

It's horrific to read what PC users have to put up with and I bite my "get a mac" tongue more often than I use it. But I must concur. Seriously. I wouldn't use a top-of-the-line Windows computer if it was custom-made and gift-wrapped. I would sooner keep my three-year-old Mac.

[bibliojunkie]

A normally level headed, cynical friend sent me the same email last week. Worried that a virus had captured her address book, I rang her and she confirmed she had sent it and now regrets her stupidity. It was put down to another senior moment 'cos she has a rule of not forwarding any 'send this to 20 friends or you'll have bad luck' type things. Also, she's fed up with folk like me ringing her up about it.

Ali

[Thomasin]

I was sent one 2 days ago saying that Bill Gates was sharing his fortune! If you forwarded the email you would supposedly be paid $245 by him, because he would track it for two weeks. The amount was increased every time another person passed it on. At the end of this two week period Bill Gates would contact you for your address and send you a cheque. This scam seems to have gone through India to North Africa and was accompanied by ecstatic emails from people who claimed to have received enormous sums. Creepy!

Thomasin

[MarkJ]

I was sent one 2 days ago saying that Bill Gates was sharing his fortune! If you forwarded the email you would supposedly be paid $245 by him, because he would track it for two weeks. The amount was increased every time another person passed it on. At the end of this two week period Bill Gates would contact you for your address and send you a cheque. This scam seems to have gone through India to North Africa and was accompanied by ecstatic emails from people who claimed to have received enormous sums. Creepy!

Thomasin

Blimey Thomasin - that is a really old chain email! I can remember that one from several years back!

Macs by the way are not the only way (and certainly not the cheapest!) to avoid viruses - it is Windows, not the PC, which is the target of nearly all malwares. If you don't run Windows on your PC, you are as safe - or more so, depending on the OS you use - than using a Mac ;)
Even Windows - when the user has up to date anti virus software and a few other little bits and pieces (firewall, malware protection, browser security, etc) - can be a safe enough system. The more the user understands about how these malwares and nasties work, the better they can protect themselves. Obvious things - like not opening attachments without checking they are genuine, even when they come from a friend - are fairly easy to do and protect the system from around 95% of infection.
Another tip - and one which many Windows users seem to fall down on is to disable HTML in your emails. Yes, it does mean that the pretty fluffy kittens or animated chicks that people send won't work - but it also prevents quite a few other issues. From my experience, very few Windows users disable HTML emails and they ae one of the ways the spammers can check that you have received their junk and actually opened it.

Esdel - you can manually collect updates for your Microsoft OS direct from the company - you don't have to use their automatic downloading. The only problem there is that - with the automatic updates disabled - you need to check very regularly for updates, otherwise you could find yourself with a problem.

Windows - as I have mentioned several times before - is targetted by the malware creators because it has the lions share of the market. Believe me, if the Mac reaches 90+% (or Linux, or any other OS), then the writers will shift to target that system. Yes, by default the *nix systems used by Linux and Mac OSX are more secure but there *are* ways to affect those machines. Less easy perhaps, but certainly not hard - especially if you use the owner of the machine to do the hard work for you. People will still run programs they are given - or open attachments etc ;)

Just a final word for the Mac (and Linux) users - although there are few if any real live viruses out there which affect those systems (apart from proof of concept stuff), they are still vulnerable in other ways. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security because you are not targetted by the huge amount of Windows viruses.

Mark

[sue2white]

Some (wise?) folk ONLY open messages from people THEY KNOW (so you maybe did not open this one!)

Unfortunately, this was from someone I know.

Sue

[v.wells]

Tempting as it is!
I have been sent an email saying that if I forward it to eight people, I will get a free Ericsson T18 Laptop, but if I forward it to twenty (do I have 20 to forward to??) then I will get a free Ericsson R320 Laptop

What do you think??
Too good to be true?

Sue:confused:

Too good to be true - Delete the email!

[arthurk]

Another tip - and one which many Windows users seem to fall down on is to disable HTML in your emails. Yes, it does mean that the pretty fluffy kittens or animated chicks that people send won't work - but it also prevents quite a few other issues. From my experience, very few Windows users disable HTML emails and they ae one of the ways the spammers can check that you have received their junk and actually opened it.

If you don't want to disable HTML completely, another alternative (which I believe is as effective) is to disable the automatic loading of image files etc, and you then get to choose whose images you will look at. This works in Thunderbird and Outlook Express - I don't know about other email programs. However, most spam can be recognised by its subject and/or sender, and doesn't even need to be opened.


Esdel - you can manually collect updates for your Microsoft OS direct from the company - you don't have to use their automatic downloading. The only problem there is that - with the automatic updates disabled - you need to check very regularly for updates, otherwise you could find yourself with a problem.

You can also set Windows Update so that it notifies you when updates are available, and you then go to get them manually.

Arthur

[Peter_uk_can]

Another time waster....

My contacts know better than to send chain letters. "you must really read this" tripe... I have let them all know. If you haven't something to say then don't send the e-mail.

It still suprises me that after years of the internet it is still necessary to go over and over the same garbage.

Perhaps paint the delete key a bright red, it will enable you to find it quicker and get on with something meaningful.