Bot nets are the Holy Grail of spammers, phishing gangs and other malicious individuals and criminal organizations. These are global networks of “slave” computers — whose owners have no idea that their machines are being used to send millions of spam, phishing, adware, spyware and malware messages every day. They may wonder why their computers run slowly, and that available processing resources seem to be strangely low.

How on earth do people’s computers end up being hooked into these worldwide bot networks?

Easy.

They open spam messages with attachments with no idea what they contain.

They download free games, music, videos, screensavers, etc, etc, etc with adware, spyware and other malware (including keyloggers, trojans, viruses and worms) attached or embedded. (Keyloggers record your keystrokes when entering usernames and passwords for everything from your Facebook account to your bank account, then send them to the vermin who sent them to you.)

A current crop is the “Please view my resume (or CV)” scam. Take a look at these messages we’ve received over recent weeks. They all claim to be from different people, but the messages are all the same (including misspelling “quite interested”), they contain attachments all around the same size and you open them at your peril.

We have dozens more examples.

Now we’re seeing a new twist on this scam: the Amazon shipping label variation.

The Bottom Line:

Do NOT open these messages! NEVER!

If you’re not expecting an attachment, don’t know the sender or you’re suspicious, either get in touch with the sender and confirm the contents (and if you don’t know the sender, STILL treat it suspiciously!)

Download reliable adware, spyware and malware removal software and run it regularly (at least twice a week, or daily if you work regularly with your computer). You need several applications, because they all seem to remove different kinds of malicious scripts.

Here are some reputable free software applications (Google these products if you’re not sure of download sources):

Adware and Spyware Removal

• Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2008
• Spybot Search and Destroy 1.6
• MalwareBytes Anti-Malware highly recommended
• Microsoft Windows Defender
• SuperAntiSpyware Good for removing Zlob trojan infections
• Ewido Anti-Malware
• a² (a-squared) Scanner

Preventing the Installation of Adware and Spyware

• SpywareBlaster 3.5.1
• SpywareGuard 2.2