The BBB has issued an urgent scam alert to businesses and consumers. Fraudulent emails are being sent that appear to come from the BBB. The emails have the subject of "Complaint from your customers," return addresses that the BBB does not use (for example: riskmanager@bbb.org), and are signed with the address of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The email contains a link to a non-BBB web site.

If you receive an email like this, delete it immediately! If you have already clicked on a link in the email, run a full virus scan. You can also report any information received to the BBB via their Report a Scam form.

The BBB is working with law enforcement to determine its source and stop the fraudulent campaign.

Visit the BBB News Center for more information as well as a copy of an example email.

avast! is warning that there are three types of holiday-related email scams making the rounds: Charity scams, UPS delivery scams, and E-card scams.

Avoid getting ripped off… read all about it.

A new wave of malware changes the file name of an executible. So, for example, you’ve got a file named I-am-a-virus.exe. You wouldn’t double click to run that right? No way! Well, what if that same file was named I-am-a-photo-from-Mom.jpg. That would be safe to open right? Well, maybe not anymore.

All this geek can say is … YIKES! Read the entire article at Hackers flip filenames to create "safe" file extensions.

Consider this your reminder to get antivirus and antispyware software installed on your machine, keep it up to date, and trust no file before it’s scanned!

Features will include:

• Automated daily scan: Searches over 3,000 vulnerabilities (in forms, links, development code, etc.) that could be used to steal information or infect visitors with malware.
• Fix the threat: The dashboard provides recommendations and a security hotline number to address security issues on your site.
• Trusted site seal: Visitors can click with confidence when they see the Website Protection seal with the most recent “pass” scan date.

The Website Protection Site Scanner will give our clients the opportunity to secure their site even more! High Aspirations, Inc.’s maintenance clients have always relied on us to keep their sites up to date to protect against hackers and catch and clean up any hacking that does get through, but the Website Protection Site Scanner now gives us a chance to protect and prevent hacking of web sites even more!

Watch for more information on this new service coming soon.

Since Marilyn and I both use this software and like it, when we learn of a sale, we like to pass it on. The folks at SUPERAntiSpyware are running a sale right now where you can get…

10% off all multi-user licenses.

Prices start as low as $115.00 for a 5-user lifetime license and $240.00 for a 10-user lifetime license. Take an additional 10% off those prices now through March 1, 2010. We can quote any number of users, just ask!

Additional discounts for educational, government, and non-profit clients may also apply.

Since this is a private sale, you’ll need to order through High Aspirations, Inc.. We’ll then send you the license code you need!

Sale ends March 1, 2010!

For just $19.95 you can get a SUPERAntiSpyware Professional LIFETIME Edition license. The lifetime edition gives you free program and definition updates for the life of the product! This license normally costs $39.90 – you’d be getting it for half price!

Since this is a private sale that we’ve arranged with SUPERAntiSpyware just for friends of High Aspirations, Inc., you’ll need to use the PayPal link below to order. We’ll then send you the license code you need!

Order link removed – Sale is over!

We’ve used SUPERAntiSpyware for a couple of years now and have recommended it to many of our clients. We’ve installed in on our own and family member’s machines. I think that tells you what we think of this software!

Private Sale ends Monday, November 16, 2009!

Right around the time you pack away your last holiday decoration, you realize that it’s tax time, whether you like it or not. The scammers realize it too and are already hard at work trying to relieve you of some of your hard earned money or your identity or both! There’s the audit scam, the one aimed at seniors and their social security money, the ‘we owe you money’, the ‘you owe us money’, and more.

The usual scam rules apply: don’t trust any email that says it’s from the IRS, don’t click on any link in any of the emails, and verify that it’s a scam or not immediately. Remember that the IRS will never, ever contact you via email so no matter how legitimate that email or link to that “IRS” site looks do yourself a favor and go to the real IRS site and if you want to take the time call them directly.

The wonderful people at Internet Scambusters have been kind enough to put together an entire page on the latest IRS scams and how to avoid them. You can find that page by visiting http://www.scambusters.org/irsscams.html.

I found that there were some things that should not be. I ran a full anti-virus scan, removed anything that I could not identify as being legitimate and by the time I was done, I felt like the machine was pretty clean. I knew I still needed to run an anti-spyware, but since I needed to actually download and install that, I didn’t want to connect to the internet until I felt at least somewhat safe. Now as much as I hate to admit this, I actually don’t use anti-spyware on a regular basis. I usually tell people they should, but I just never did it for myself so I needed to do some research.

What I finally came across was a product which I felt would do the job. This product is SuperAntiSpyware. I installed, scanned, and found that many of the items I was under the impression that I had manually removed correctly were actually still there. I was extremely impressed with the results, so much so, that I’ve since installed it on my father’s PC. So far I have yet to get a call saying that something happened to his home page or that his anti-virus is telling him he needs to buy it to remove all the threats on his PC. He is definitely my test subject. If I can keep him spyware, malware & virus free, then I have finally won the war!

When my daily virus scan finished on Friday, I had an infection warning that c:\windows\system32\macromed\flash\flashutil10a.exe was infected with Trojan horse PSW.Generic6.AQPD and had been moved to the virus vault. Since I had spent some time on Friday researching layouts for a new site, I figured some site I visited had a stupid flash ad or something and that did me in. On Saturday, I received a resident shield warning for the same trojan horse in a system restore file. I clicked heal and began searching.

I updated Spybot Search & Destroy and ran it, nothing. I remembered that AVG was unable to connect to the update server on Friday, so I made sure to update that. Then I searched Google. I found out that it’s a false positive with AVG and it should be fixed after updating the software again. So, I restored the “viruses” from the virus vault and ran a complete scan.

No viruses found!

We have detected a new spam tactic in which MP3 files are used to promote stocks.

In the first multi-media spam, spammers have begun attaching MP3 files which are named after popular recording artists and songs. After a recipient has opened the attachment, an electronically enhanced voice delivers a message promoting a stock for a particular company. The message is designed to encourage the recipient to invest in a particular company. The spam perpetrators then sell their shares after the stock price has risen briefly. This is typically known as a “pump and dump” scam.

To listen to an actual MP3 spam message, please use the following URL: http://www.spamstopshere.com/spam.mp3

We believe that what we are seeing right now is just a test by spammers to determine the effectiveness of MP3 spam. We do not believe that MP3 spam will be the wave of the future. It is unlikely that people will fall for an MP3 spam more than once or twice, whereas text and image spam is hard to ignore because it is in the body of the e-mail. We do not think that MP3 spam on iPods is feasible, but spammers certainly are looking to target the new Apple iPhone.

If you decide to give SpamStopsHere a try, let them know that High Aspirations, Inc. sent you! If you are one of our clients, let us know and we’ll take care of everything for you!