 |
| A warning note from CERN. |
A spoof occurs when a malicious hacker gets email addresses from your contact list and sends emails that look as thought they are coming from you. The hacker is "phishing" for someone to click a URL in order to get begin getting access to another computer or to persuade the recipient to send money.
A favorite spoof is an appeal to you to wire money to someone on your email list who is stranded in a foreign country like Nigeria and needs instant cash to buy a plane ticket home. You will be repaid as soon as the sender returns. Yeah, sure.
Someone got access to my AOL contact list and sent emails to a couple of hundred people saying in my name: "I recommend this - click here." I myself have received many such emails and by now I know enough not to click on them. Another clue to recipients of the spoof in my name was that the email address attached to the sender was a name that looked nothing like mine. But still, I am sorry this happened and I am taking steps to prevent a recurrence.
Ever since I purchased a Mac, I have not had a virus problem, so this is a first on the new computer. Someone who received one of the spoofs sent me an email sympathizing and suggesting I change my ISP password and have a complete scan of my computer with the Kaspersky antivirus program or another one that works. This program costs money to buy and more money to keep updated. So I sought advice. Here's what I did:
1. I called AOL right away and changed my password. It is now a unique password that I use for no other purpose.So now I am looking for advice again from anyone who has faced any of these problems and dealt with them satisfactorily. I started to load OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and I see that it has created a host of problems for some people. The one-star rating is the most common rating of the new software. I am holding off on upgrading to the new Mac operating system.
2. At the same time, I changed my security question and answer. It is one that could not be guessed from any bio.
3. I was advised by AOL tech support to check whether I am getting properly covered by McAfee. Then I discovered that AOL's McAfee download is not compatible with Mac computers and operating systems or on Safari. It requires Windows and Explorer or Firefox.
4. So then I went to JustAsk.com and asked for advice on an anti-virus program that works with Macs. (On JustAsk you rate the answer and you pay a fee for the answer if you are satisfied.) I was told to use AVG, a free Dutch-based antivirus program with an office in San Francisco. AVG got rave reviews in 2006-2010. I did this and the program searched 1.3 million files and found four Trojan horses, which have all been removed and the files in which they appear have been deleted. The Trojan horses were all in AOL messages that had these subject lines: "service completed", "payment advice", "invoice" and "payment".
5. Then I read a review that says that AVG in 2014 is not so good any more. Bummer.
