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back to article MtGox collapse victims now picked off by phishing vultures

Phishing scammers are going after people hoping to claw some of their money back from the MtGox collapse. Researchers with computer security biz Cyren have spotted a new round of spam messages claiming to originate from Kraken, the exchange that is heading up efforts to pay out Bitcoins recovered from the MtGox implosion. The …

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  1. Oengus

    Users don't help themselves.

    "users should avoid clicking on any links from untrusted and unsolicited emails, and should definitely avoid launching any executables."

    Quite a number of users probably don't realise that the download is an executable. The windows default option of "Hide extensions for known file types" doesn't help.

    6 0 Reply
    1. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      Re: Users don't help themselves.

      Even if it did display the extension, there's a lot of users who remember zipfiles that were ".exe" to auto un-zip. But yes, MS has not helped anyone, ever, by hiding the extensions by default. Assholes.

      3 0 Reply
    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      "Hide extensions for known file types"

      That option set to default has by definition ensured that the clueless remain clueless.

      It has been more than two decades now that Microsoft foisted itself on the world in a particular set of events. During that time, had the masses grown accustomed to at least seeing entension names, perhaps today a much larger portion of the population would at least have half a clue of what is being said when they heard "do not click on executables".

      Instead, thanks to that option, most people probably don't even know what an executable is, much less how to recognize one.

      I'm sure spammers all over the globe are blessing Microsoft every day for that blunder.

      4 0 Reply
    3. Captain Scarlet
      Reply Icon

      Re: Users don't help themselves.

      Really I prefer they are hidden instead of ZOMG MY DOCUMENT IS BROKEN, only then to find the file was saved without an extension.

      0 1 Reply
  2. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Pint

    The header pic is pretty cool. I'd like to have one of those coins as a trinket.

    1 0 Reply
  3. asdf

    Wow people are great aren't they? What's next doxxing and then acid attacks?

    0 0 Reply
  4. xperroni
    Paris Hilton

    It figures

    If those people were gullible enough to pay real cash money (in fast PC's, video cards, ASIC boxes, etc.) to make their pretend dosh, then trust it to some bloke on the Internet for safekeeping, it's no surprise they'd fall for a mail scam.

    3 0 Reply
  5. TheSkunkyMonk

    i wrote abit of code on sorceforge years ago called mshell in vb, removed recently for some unkown reason highlighting the biggest problem with windows and trojans, with a simple dll call you can hide your process from taskmon to top this off this stunt can also be pulled off in the dev version spy++

    its a stupid feature that should of never been added as it only allows abuse and personally I believe that is why it was added.

    0 0 Reply

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