zee germans

i have been flooded with a rash of german spam since this weekend in my gmail account. i am sure the quite a few of you have as well. someone that we know (their computer actually) is infected with this virus. i even got a spam that said it was from tisa.l.shumaker. all the text of the emails is super-nationalist german political propaganda. of particular importance to our friend jesse 'bombs over dresden' gloyd is an email that people are receiving over and over that calls the bombing of dreseden 'a holocaust of american causation'.

all in all, the wave of junk email isn't really that hard to deal with, but it's the virus that's the problem. if you're infected there's a big fat hole in your computer's 'back door' (tee he) that allows these people to use it as a zombie machine to send out a rediculous ammount of spam. luckily enough this doesn't infect Mac users, but those of you with PC's at home or at work should run your anti-virus programs.

check out this site to make sure that you have a recent enough update of your anti-virus stuff, and the names of the files/programs that you are looking for. it's really important to do this. also, incourage people around your offices and schools to do this.

here's a reuters wire article about the whole thing so that you know what i am talking about is legit. there's even some people that are thinking that bloggers might be the target of this recent spam outbreak as some form of nazi viral marketing. check that out here.

hope this helps.