We recently had a new account that sent out a fraudulent PM (private message) claiming to have detected a virus "on your computer". The PM came from several usernames that resembled " forum administration".
The message was similar to this:
Important message from the forum administration!
A virus alert was noticed on your computer.
We highly recommend you to check your computer and perform online virus check at our site immediately:
ht t p://security-tool2010.net/ta
----------------------------------------------------
Forum Administration www.ecgrr.com. - or -
Hello, friend. There are viruses activities from your computer in last few days. Strongly recommend you to check your computer. You can find a report about your computer's security and solve every problem with it here:
ht t p://www.check-pc.net/detected/
Thank you. Forum member.
Please note that there was no virus detected on your computer and this was what is known as a "Phishing" attempt - a ploy to get you to click on a link and try to get information from you or send you to a site that may pose an actual virus threat.
As a rule of thumb,
NEVER click on a link sent to you by a person/persons unknown!!
The accounts that did this have been removed and a few additional blocks have been placed, but this could happen again.
The forum area is open to anyone to join, and short of manually running all membership sign-ups, there is no way to prevent abuse by a few. In this case an alert member quickly reported this to me. If you see a questionable account or post please feel free to bring it to my attention so that it can be investigated.
Thanks!!
Author