In ancient times the best way to avoid a Trojan Horse was to heed the advice, Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts. Now the Trojan horse is made of computer code, not wood, and the attackers aren't Greeks, they're geeks.
Recently, more and more AOL users have been contacting the Internet Fraud Watch about a horrifying problem. It seems they've discovered e-mails in their sent mail folders that have their AOL username and password in the body. A few people have even had e-mail bearing their name and password bounce back to them as undeliverable. None of these people had ever tried to send their username and password to anyone. There was one thing shared by all the victims.
Everyone had recently received an e-mail that claimed to be from AOL informing them that their buddylist program was out of date and the upgrade was attached.
Unfortunately, the attached file - named buddylist.exe, buddylist.zip, buddylst.zip or any of several other variations - is actually a Trojan Horse virus. It purports to be a useful program but actually does something nasty. It extracts your username and password from your AOL folder and then e-mails that information to its creator. The reason some people had the e-mail bounce back to them is that the free e-mail provider used by whoever the villain is has been trying to shut down the accounts almost as fast as new ones can be created.
What can you do? For one thing, don't download .exe attachments unless you have requested that someone send you a program. Second, never download any attachment from a stranger. Third, if you're uncertain about whether an e-mail is actually from AOL, contact AOL tech support. And always remember that AOL does not send out upgrades by e-mail. AOL upgrades occur automatically during log-off.
Beware of e-mails bearing .exe attachments!
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