I got a very convincing email today that looked exactly like a daily email alert from the CNN website. If it wasnt for the fact i hadnt subscribed and im naturally suspicious I might have just clicked on the link. The supposed headline was very catchy to entice people to click (something about us citizens getting gas subsidies).

Anyway - i forwarded it to snopes and they replied saying it was an old virus but in a new 'package' the page was updated quite recently (6th Aug).

so anyone getting an unasked for email alerts from cnn - beware.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/fbi-facebook.asp

Ohh thanks for that.. It takes me ages to get through the masses of shite emails i get.. so i'll look out for that.. Dosey mare that I am I probably would have opened it...!

I suddenly started getting these a few days ago. Five or six each day, some are diverted by the spam filter, some aren't. I don't subscribe to any alerts/joke lists/top 10s/etc so I've been deleting them along with the rest of the junk I get.

well it was the first one that got through my spam filter. (i get about 30-40 phishing/spams a day in the filter anyway).

I was just a new one on me. Anything from a bank or credit card I know is pure crud and delete immediatly if it gets through. This one did look quite convincing - it was just the headline was so OTT that i thought surely not. Once i had been to the cnn website directly and seen no mention of the story I knew it was a phoney and sent it off to snopes. Forewarned is forearmed though so i thought i would heads up anyone else.

I long for the days of 30-40 spams... I usually get 200-300 per day

The CNN things must be new; and I wonder if there's an Ohio connection, because the same day I started getting them on my personal account they were hitting my work account as well. My employer's servers were slammed very hard this week with a gigantic spam flood. The filters were overwhelmed and a lot got through, including the phony CNN alerts. Damn nuisance :curse:

Thanks for letting us know, I started getting about 4 of these a day last week in my bulk folder, which i deleted as I hadn't subscribed to them. I just thought I was getting them as I get the NYT online and my info had been passed on, as seems to be the case here. It makes a change from the 'medical' ones I seem to get, perhaps someone is trying to tell me something!!