Heads up on a new e-mail scam

by Marsha Ward

I had a very insightful post ready for yesterday (yes, I'm writing this on Monday, but it will appear as a Sunday post), but with one thing and another, it didn't get posted, and went right out of my head as I slept. However, I think this warning from Data Doctors is timely:

Very few e-mail scams get past the seasoned user, but I almost fell for a very cleverly crafted message that came in this week. Tis the season to be flying, so anything that looks like an airline confirmation gets my attention (especially since others can book a flight for me on occasion). Here is what came in that almost fooled me enough to almost get me to open the attachment:

Thank you for using our new service "Buy airplane ticket Online" on our website.
Your account has been created:

Your login: Custfeedback
Your password: passNUX8

Your credit card has been charged for $406.44.
We would like to remind you that whenever you order tickets on our website you get a discount of 10%!
Attached to this message is the purchase Invoice and the flight ticket.To use your ticket, simply print it on a color printer, and you are set to take off for the journey!

Kind regards,
Ted Hensley
Frontier Airlines

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The attachment was listed as: E-ticket_N7399294.zip

Because I don't often fly on Frontier and wasn't familiar with their e-ticket process (and wasn't paying attention), I opened the zip file which had the following file in the extraction list:
E-ticket_N7399294_and_Invoice_for_N73992943442.exe

Nothing that anyone sends you should ever be an "exe" file as they are executable files (a program that will run some form of code, in this case, malicious).

This was one of the more clever attempts at infecting through e-mail that I have seen in a while and wanted to make sure everyone keeps their "eye of suspicion" out during the summer flying season!