Talk about conspiring against everyday people...

reply to post by jeichelberg


The best thing to do is to contact your email provider and report the email as Phishing. I know Gmail and others have teams of security folks that check on and investigate these types of emails so that it doesn't happen again. American Airlines didn't sell your information or anything. These people that send these emails just find email addresses online however they do and then pretend to be ANY company they can in order to get your information. Not really a conspiracy, just some online identity thieves.

reply to post by PennKen2009


Well, I believe it is a conspiracy...I cannot prove there are two or more people, but I believe there are two or more people engaged in this type of internet-based activity...and the definition of a conspiracy is:

DICTIONARY
conspiracy
Definition
con·spir·a·cy
[ kən spírrəssee ]
To hear the pronunciation, install Silverlight
con·spir·a·cies Plural
NOUN
1.
plan to commit illegal act together: a secret plan or agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal or subversive act
2.
making of agreement by conspirators: the making of a secret plan or agreement to commit an illegal or subversive act
3.
group of conspirators: a group of people planning or agreeing in secret to commit an illegal or subversive act

www.bing.com...

No, as your last flight was. 1979, and the fake ticket was a few days ago, my point was that another way of looking at this besides the possible endeavor to introduce a virus to your personal computer.....that a whole other way of being aware of this was that, by the official looking e-ticket, someone could obviously, when no ticket has been purchased or travel actually taken place, FAKE that they had travelled when, in fact, they had not---and then, from that, it follows that it can be made to look like someone is in a certain place doing certain things that they might not in fact be doing at all, no even be in that location. Sorry, guess I am on another planet. Will gradefully or not so much, leave the thread now...

I received one as well this morning. Almost the same email:

Notice,
FLIGHT NUMBER 983
ELECTRONIC 837952872
DATE & TIME / DECEMBER 10, 2011, 12:54 PM
ARRIVING / NEW YORK JFK
TOTAL PRICE / 327.11 USD

Your bought ticket is attached to the letter as a scan document.
You can print your ticket.

Thank you
American Airlines.


Went straight to the trash bin. The grammar alone should be enough to clue people in to the fact this is some type of spam/scam : "Your bought ticket is attached to the letter as a scan document."

This photo shows the contents of the zip file.

imageshack.us...

reply to post by Zaphod

Sorry, I don't follow zero day exploits. Its mainly pointless. (Due to not having any knowledge of it, thats why its called zero day, it hasn't hit mainstream) I do hear what you are saying though.

Do you have credit cards?
If you do have them you should check your statements.
Just in case...

reply to post by jimmysinger


See, this is proof that it is a conspiracy...Your e-mail is worded slightly different than mine...Wow, there was an .exe file in it...

Originally posted by Zaphod

Originally posted by CREAMIf you unzip the .zip file and there is any .exe's in the folder, I would beware. Otherwise that should be safe.

This is really bad advice and I'd respectfully ask you not give it to others. There are attacks where simply rendering the icons in explorer for the files in question can result in an infection (depending on the patch state of the machine). This is one vector Stuxnet used to infect.

I know you can mess with the icons, but if you go to file info and the extension is .zip then it is a .zip file and the contents of which can be viewed with an extracting program before even extracting it. An icon is just an icon, not the file extension.

I will keep giving my advice because it would be silly just to never open a .zip file.

That doesn't mean that files that are contain inside the .zip file aren't infected, but if the only thing inside the .zip is a .pdf or something and not a .exe or something, OP would be fine. I am not sure if that is the case for OP, but this is what I learned on the old pay-per-install forums which was a forum about spreading adware and trogens.

Whatever, the bottom line is if OP didn't order plane tickets, than obviously it is spam, end of story. If OP did order plane tickets, then I wouldn't be all paranoid about this.

Originally posted by CREAM

Originally posted by Zaphod

Originally posted by CREAMIf you unzip the .zip file and there is any .exe's in the folder, I would beware. Otherwise that should be safe.

This is really bad advice and I'd respectfully ask you not give it to others. There are attacks where simply rendering the icons in explorer for the files in question can result in an infection (depending on the patch state of the machine). This is one vector Stuxnet used to infect.

I know you can mess with the icons, but if you go to file info and the extension is .zip then it is a .zip file and the contents of which can be viewed with an extracting program before even extracting it. An icon is just an icon, not the file extension.

I will keep giving my advice because it would be silly just to never open a .zip file.

The issue is many folks will use the built in windows utility to open the archive which will extract it to a folder. That folder when simply open on unpatched machines can cause an infection when a malicious icon resource is read from the executable. This is without even launching the executable.

reply to post by jeichelberg


A zip file requires an unzipper.

Not to be insulting, but it isn't the 70s anymore. You should know these things.


Acquire something like 7 zip and unzip the file, should it be needed.


If you suspect a virus, simply call the airline. I'm sure they'd like the money of the virus maker from suing them.

reply to post by jeichelberg


Glad you did not open the zip file and that you sent it to American. Someone already said this, but if you want to stop other people from getting this, also share it with you internet provider, as that is where it came through.

I agree that plotting to send false tickets to an unsuspecting person on the internet, with the intention of decieving them, as this was not information you needed or wanted, is defintely a conspiracy.

reply to post by Gorman91


No insult perceived or taken...I was sharing the information with others, as it might be important to let them know about scams and other plots that are ACTUALLY taking place in our everyday lives...The credit cards I use are incapable of being used to purchase items on the Internet...

I receive these kinds of emails all the time. I just mark them as spam/phishing, gmail takes care of the rest and I change my passwords for banking and email at least once every other month. I don't think it's a real deep dark conspiracy like other things on this site but more of an example of people trying to fool people online into giving them their personal info for the thieves' own gains. Forwarding the examples to your ISP or email provider will help to prevent it in the future.

reply to post by PennKen2009


Thanks, but I can think of nothing darker than a team (2 or more) actually acting out the plan to rob one or more persons of their property (whether it be material or virtual)...It is these real conspiracies that need the most attention...