Plenty of fraudulent phishing emails that try to get your username and password

There are plenty of SPAM emails going around these days, claiming to come from the support desk of your email provider, or some other place such as ebay or paypal. Usually, in one form or another, they ask that you reply to them with your username and password to take care of a problem, or they provide a link to a dodgy web site. DO NOT CLICK on the links, or DO NOT REPLY to the email. This is phishing, they simply want your account to abuse it. NEVER give out account information, without verification.
Examples:

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Dear PayPal User,



We are currently under maintenance and we will like you to Update your account in other for you to be able to Send Money, Receive Money, and also Shop online with your PayPal account Click on this Link Below to Update Your Account.

CLICK HERE
Thanks For Your Co-Operation,

PayPal Account Department.

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Your mailbox quota has been exceeded the storage limit which is 20GB as set by your administrator, You are currently running on 20.9GB.



You may not be able to send or receive new mails until you re-validate your mailbox.



To re-activate your account please click the link below:

http://www.acc-central.com/


Thanks and we are sorry for the inconveniences

Local Host.

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Your mailbox quota has been exceeded the storage limit which is 20GB

as set by your administrator, You are currently running on 20.9GB.

You may not be able to send or receive new mails until you re-validate
your mailbox.

To re-activate your account please click the link below

http://www.icebrrg.com/Public/ViewForm.aspx?formID=44302

Thanks and we are sorry for the inconveniences

Local host

---

We would like to inform you that we are currently carrying out scheduled maintenance and upgrade of our webmail service and as a result of this; our e-mail client has been changed and your
original password will be reset. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

To maintain your e-mail account, you must reply to this email immediately, and provide the the following details of your account:

Account Name:
Current Password:
Contact Phone:

Failure to do this within the next forty-eight hours will immediately render your email account deactivated from our database.

For Help and Support, contact the Technical Support help desk at:technicalsupportteam20009@gmail.com

Thank you for using our webmail.

Webmail Service,
Technical Team.
©Networks All Rights Reserved.

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Dear Webmail Account User,

This message was sent automatically by a program on Webmail admin center
which periodically checks the size of inbox, The program is run
automatically to ensure no user inbox grows too large. If your inbox
becomes too large, you will be unable to receive new emails. Just before
this message was sent, you are currently running on 20.9 GB, You have has
exceeded the storage limit which is 20GB.

To help us re-set your Account SPACE on our database prior to maintain
your INBOX, you must reply to this e-mail providing us your the Below
information:

E-mail ( ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... )
Username/ID ( ... ... ... ... ... ... )
Current Password ( ... ...... ... ) Retype Password: ( ... ...... ... )

From this point you will be unable to receive new email as it will be
returned to the sender, Provide the above information to enable us help
reset your webmail immediately.

NOTE: Your Webmail Account Expire in Three (3) Days. After you read this
message, it is best to REPLY with the required information to upgrade
MailBox. Reply to this message immediately to Re activate your Account.

Thank you for your cooperation.
Webmail Help Desk. System Administrator
--------------------------------------------------

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Confirm Your Webmail Identities.

Your Webmail Quota Has Exceeded The Set Quota/Limit Which Is 20GB.
Your Are Currently Running On 23GB due to hidden files and folder on your
Mailbox.Please you are to follow the Below information to Validate Your
Mailbox And Increase Your Quota.

First Name:
Username/ID:
Password:
Confirm Password:

*Important*
Please provide all these information completely and correctlyotherwise due
to security reasons we may have to close your accounttemporarily.We have
been sending this notice to all our email accountowners and this is the
last notice/verification exercise.

Thanks
HELPDESK SUPPORT.

---

Dear Webmail User,
This message was sent automatically by a program on Webmail which
periodically checks the size of inboxes, where new messages are
received.
The program is run weekly to ensure no one's inbox grows too large. If
your inbox becomes too large, you will be unable to receive new email.
Just before this message was sent, you had 18 Megabytes (MB) or more of
messages stored in your inbox on your Webmail. To help us re-set your
SPACE on our database prior to maintain your INBOX, you must reply to
this e-mail and enter your

Current User name (_________)
and Password(________ )

You will continue to receive this warning message periodically if your
inbox size continues to be between 18 and 20 MB. If your inbox size
grows to 20 MB, then a program on Bates Webmaiwill move your oldest email
to a
folder in your home directory to ensure that you will continue to be
able to receive incoming email. You will be notified by email that this
has taken place. If your inbox grows to 25 MB, you will be unable to
receive new email as it will be returned to the sender.
After you read a message, it is best to REPLY and SAVE it to another
folder.

Thank you for your cooperation.
Webmail Help Desk

Obnoxious malware site

Just stumbled across the obnoxious malware site Netsecurityworks.com. Claimed to scan my harddrive and found lots of viruses. Haha, it found windows viruses, but there is no Windows on the computer. Trying to close the annoying window triggered an automatic download of an .exe file. BAD...

Here is a web site which lists URLs for highly suspicious/malware web: MalwareULR.com

The conference scam

I haven't seen this one yet, but it has all the hallmarks of a scam:

PARTICIPATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND UNITED KINGDOM EVENTS OF (IWCO) 


Greetings, 



We at Ideal World Concept Organization (IWCO) send our warm greetings to our entire

members worldwide. And with great enthusiasm, we wish to invite groups, youths, women

and youth focused organizations to be part of our forthcoming combined international
conference on child labour, abuse and neglect taking place in the United States and the
United Kingdom respectively. The combined conferences are of two segments.



The first segment shall commence in Andalusia, Alabama USA on 16th till 19th June, 2009.The venue is BLUE LAKE AUDITORIUM, 8569 Oakwood lane, Andalusia, Alabama 36241, USA.



The second segment shall take place in London from 22nd till 25th June, 2009 at FLOSSIES CONFERENCE CENTRE Station Road, East Tisted, Near Alton, Hampshire, GU34 3QP, United Kingdom.



THE OBJECTIVES:



1. To discuss the root causes of child labour, abuse and neglect in order to help in
eradicating these social ills.

2. To re-educate and enlighten the youths and adults about these social vices and
also promote community organizing as a tool to re-connect people to each other with
a common goal of building safe, supportive and good communities.

3. To create spaces for the youths of the world to acquire the power of collective action,
critical dialogue and community organizing to undermine child labour, abuse and neglect.

4. To equip the youth and adult participants with vital tools and know-how.
This will aid them in conducting such workshops amongst youths and women in their various
countries.



We have noticed that this is an incredible means of interacting with different organizations
of the world on a particular issue as it affects youths, women and adults. Moreover, funding may
be provided for individuals from qualifying organizations. Provisions have been made for
all delegates to this event, all round tickets, feeding and accommodation in USA by our sponsors.
Please note that all delegates will take care of their feeding and accommodation in the UK as the resources of (IWCO) do not cover that.



CRITERIA FOR PARTICIPATION:



Only groups with member delegates between the numbers of five (5) minimum and ten (10) maximum selected would be allowed to participate from each of the selected countries. Also individuals who do not belong to any of the organizations but are sincerely interested to participate should form a group of at least five and then apply as group. Please note that all participants MUST be part of the two segments (U.S.A. and U.K.) or their registration forms will not be processed by the IWCO secretariat.



MODE OF APPLICATION:



Interested organizations should forward the following information about their organization.

1. Aims and objectives of their organization.
2. Organization profile.
3. Achievements so far.

N.B. Intending participants are expected to direct their responses to the coordinator Wilson Divine at willsondivine.iwco@gmail.com for more details. The deadline for application is as set by the Organizing Committee of (IWCO). Also note that (IWCO) will only respond and attend to the applications forward to the above contact email address. 

Yours Faithfully,



WILSON DIVINE.

(Coordinator-IWCO)

willsondivine.iwco@gmail.com

MS word document appended.

This text looks like a copy from the ICO web site
This web site about ICO looks also a bit funny, could find any information that this is a legitimate NGO.

In any case, there are a lot of similar conference frauds listed here.

Pyramid scam leader convicted.

The BBC News reports today on a Chinese man, who masterminded a pyramid scheme. Investors lost a total of ~250 Million US$, and the man was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Any investment opportunity that promises unrealistic returns, such as HYIPs etc. are simply a fraudulent pyramid scheme.

Conficker worm sinks French navy network

The Conficker worm is a highly dangerous worm spreading through USB sticks or cameras when connected to a PC. A recent victim was the French navy, see this report. The Houston justice system was infected, computers at three London hospitals were infected. It is estimated that by the end of January 10 Million Windows PCs were infected. Conficker could possibly be activated at some point in the future to wreak havoc.

Google blocks this blog, because it thinks it's a virus??

Hmm, Google is getting wacky, blocking access to one of its own blogs, because it thinks it's dangerous???



Ok, this blog is about viruses etc., but it gives warnings, it doesn't spread them...
And even so, if Google blocks their blogs in their own site, does it mean www.blogger.com is infected?? Or did the ads from Google's very own adsense pose a threat?
Well, let's see this blog will ever be readable again at some point...