Fake Paypal Virus email

I got some very dubious emails this morning from "paypal" saying that my account was going to run out in 5 days unless I opened the filed attached to the email & update my account info. I forwarded the message to Paypal. Below is Paypal's response. I just wanted to pass this warning along, not that anybody's really stupid enough to fall for it, but just in case ...

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

We can confirm that the email you received was not sent by PayPal. The
attachment contained within this email is a virus that has circulated
around the internet. If you have opened the attachment, your computer may
have been infected.

Do not surrender any personal or financial information that may be
requested. If you have previously submitted this information, we suggest
you contact your issuing financial institution to report the incident.

For additional information regarding this virus, including how to prevent
or disinfect your computer, please contact your anti-virus software or
program provider.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Sincerely,

The PayPal Team

Thanks for the warning, Tiki Chris.

http://www.samgambino.com

Yep TC, that's mimail.j I recently had to remove it from a clients machine. It's a bulk mailer virus aside from collecting your PayPal account info. It's was really annoying as it allowed someone(?) outside to access a password to thier mail server and use it to send junk mail @ a rate of 1,000 a minute. Which ofcourse bounced back to my client and ate up about 3-4 Gigs of space. Took me quite a while to remove from thier entire system, but the Mai Tai's after the job were well worth it.

BTW, there are other variations of this virus. Here is a fix is use for them. It's a free repair tool for each variation.
mimail.J is the PayPal one
mimail.L is a new one with something like wendy.zip as the attachment
here you go!

[ Edited by: Turbogod on 2003-12-18 08:43 ]

I get emails like this that claim to be from PayPal or eBay all the time. I forward 'em with full headers to [email protected] or [email protected].

PayPal and eBay will never contact you asking for sensitive information.

(and yes, I know eBay owns PayPal.)