Today we have had a whole batch of “Amazon” emails with zip file attachments, oh so convincing (at first glance) and, oh so easy to activate with an un-thinking mouseclick.

This email arrived in between me emailing a complaint to an Amazon seller that the product they sent (& for my daughters birthday!), was not what I expected, nor what was shown on the images on Amazon, and before an acknowledgement of a separate order I had just placed. Just about ideal timing to catch me harassed and to “mouseclick” without enough thought.

The attachment being a “zipped” file just made me pause long enough to think, I copied the order number (so like a genuine Amazon number) opened another browser tab, (the 47th in that window – 55 in total) pasted it into my Amazon account and searched, lo & behold – no such order!

I then went to Amazon to see what they felt about “Phishing or Spoofed E-mails”, as you can see from the image they frankly “can’t be bothered”, they can hardly be blamed for this, there is very little they can do, this type of email is so common, coming (allegedly) from online Banks, HMRC, various Couriers (who apparently cant find your premises, but have managed to find your email address!) . Whilst they, and we deplore this type of email, what can be done?. Clearly you can have Spam Filters on your system, but you then find that legitimate messages do not get through, and some spam still does however tightly you set the filtering, this again is an imperfect answer. (Any better ideas – apply here!)

What would happen if the Zip file was clicked, well as yet we don’t know, it contains a program file (.exe)  which itself does not scan as malware.

BUT – take it from us, opening this or the dozens like it that come in every day WILL lead to your PC being compromised, and perhaps data loss and damage.

Please be VERY careful….

(more to follow)