Spam + malware I hadn't seen before...

[Paddy]

This lovely little gift arrived in my inbox this evening - apparently it's been making the rounds since at least January, and possibly last fall:

QUOTE

Dear customer!

Unfortunately we were not able to deliver your postal package sent on the 26th of December in time
because the addressee's address is erroneous.
Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

United Parcel Service of America.

Accompanying the email was an attachment labeled "UPS invoice_523.zip"

Truly a lame attempt (UPS doesn't send "postal packages", they don't address their customers using "Dear customer!" and they don't have "offices" where you collect your package. Nor do they let things wander around for well over 2 months...etc. etc.) And they don't send you things purportedly from a rogers.com account (my ISP) but actually from New Zealand. Last time I checked, they had their own domain.

Apparently the payload is something known as TrojanDownloader: Win32/Bredolab.A. I think we'll just leave it zipped up nice and tight in its little "UPS" package and dump it in the nice round filing cabinet in the sky.

Now...if I could just figure out the source of the slight uptick in spam lately (none to about 3-4 a week)....

[krissel]

Ah, UPS.   Not a pleasant thought at this moment.

Since my house is at the end of a dead end street the UPS truck always turns around in my driveway by backing in and going forward up to the main road. After the last storm he crushed my garbage can and I am still in the process of trying to get some sort of compensation.

Now the latest... I ordered several items last week that were delayed in delivery due to the snowstorm. Two large boxes were to arrive on Monday so I stayed home and watched all day for the truck which never arrived. I logged on to tracking only to find out they were listed as being delivered around 1 PM that day. HUH? The report said that they were delivered to the REAR DOOR.  Well, for that to happen the driver would have had to been wearing snowshoes. And there was no indication that any large truck had come into my drive. And I had been watching...

After calling UPS they said they would try to find it, yadda, yadda and I was to call the companies involved. OK, did that.
Today, not hearing from anyone, I began to think about it and wondered if they had left the boxes at the house at the other end of the street. Since the house numbering is reversed on our street some people think the first house they come upon is #1 but I'm actually the last house.  Anyway, I trotted up the street this evening and knocked on the door. No answer. But they have a small glass enclosed entry which had several things visible and lo and behold, there were my boxes! However, they were pushed off to the corner and had other stuff piled on top of them. Apparently they were in no hurry to contact UPS  or me.

Went home and got my camera and took pictures through the glass doors of the two boxes to prove they were there. Then  I waited for a while and finally asked one of the other neighbors who I knew to call me when he saw any activity at the house. Around 9:30 PM someone arrived at the house and I drove down there and retrieved my boxes (they were very heavy). The orders were worth more than a few hundred dollars worth of stuff so I was pretty anxious to get them. I want to believe the people would have returned the stuff but I have my doubts. I know UPS was ultimately responsible but I dreaded going through all the hassle of getting new orders, etc.  The UPS driver must have been a substitute cause the regular guy knows me and where I live, not to mention the house in question is actually facing another street and has a mailbox with the other street address boldly printed on it.

So, at the moment UPS is not on my list of favorite subjects.  

Thanks for letting me get this out of my system.

[Xairbusdriver]

I am, as most of you may know, a FedEx retiree, but don't be so disappointed with UPS. You probably figured out what happened with the 'substitute' driver scenario. And the packages had been delivered to the "back door" as the site said. I'm sure their drivers, as well as the FedEx ones, were extremely busy trying to catch up with canceled flights, delayed deliveries, stranded drivers, blocked roads, etc. Most of those people that do the real work, the local "guys" and especially the drivers, probably worked over time trying to pick up the slack. I'm not trying to deny that there was human error involved, it happens, all the time, in every position in the chain. Just not very often and it usually gets someones attention if it happens more than once.

The only way I know to help in these situations is to require a signature on delivery. That usually costs extra on the sending end. And both UPS and FedEx usually have you sign for a delivery as standard practice, if you accept a package in person. But unless the package is marked as requiring a signature, they will usually leave in on the door step.

Remember, also, unlike the USPS, these companies are designed to work with businesses. Those kind of entities normally have a human in place during all working hours, so there is hardly a need to leave anything on a door step; there is always someone to sign for the box. When "the rest of us" use their services, it is not usually convenient to stay home all day, for who knows how many days, waiting for the delivery. Maybe one day, they will have a service that calls ahead and makes an appointment to meet us?

Now, a few long nails in a thin board, placed strategically on your drive way might stop the 'turn around' problem...I'd advise placing an easily seen warning sign, of course. In fact, a sign alone might do the trick.

If you do use the actual board plus nails trick, be sure to put the name and phone number of those 'helpful' neighbors, who where 'storing' your packages, on the board...

Maybe we need another forum here at TS...Tension and Stress! "Some times it just helps to talk to a friend."

[jcarter]

Thank goodness that we know all the UPS and FedEx drivers around here.
But if they were to turn around in a driveway as you describe, just leave one of your car/trucks in the WAY. In summer leave the kids bikes there.
Then they can't do that.
People turn around in our dirt road and back into our crappy shrubs, so I put big logs there and big branches. It works.
Though we are very rural and there is really very very little traffic.  And whoever turns around if we are visible they wave and say hello.

Just put something in the WAY.
Jane

And if you are expecting a package and not home, just leave a big visible note on the door to leave it on the back porch.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

just leave a big visible note on the door to leave it on the back porch

And, don't forget to note how expensive the item/items is/are. It's a big help for busy thieves.

[tacit]

For the past three or four months, I've been averaging about three of those malware emails a day in one of my mailboxes. Sometimes it claims to be from USPS, sometimes from DHL, sometimes from UPS, sometimes from Western Union, but the pitch is always the same--there's a problem with my delivery, and I need to open the attached zip file to find out why.

[MamaMoose]

Paddy,

I too have seen that piece of malware show up over the last week or so. But, 3 to r spam a week? I am getting 20 - 300 per week. Thank goodness for SpamSieve that works flawlessly with Eudora 6.2.4.

MamaMoose

[krissel]

Yeah, I'm sure they had a lot to deliver considering the snow we had but that doesn't give them a pass to allow stupidity to reign.  My address is on one road and the address on the mailbox where they delivered is not even the same road or even the same number.  It takes a real idiot to think that house is the right one.

In addition, one of the boxes was supposed to require a signature, that's why I stayed home. But he left it anyway.

As to the driveway issue, I kind of gave up trying to stop people from using it to turn around. Several years ago when they were building the house next door, I came home from work to find the contractor had driven his earth moving machines down my driveway to access the rear of the property where he was building. He had left ruts in my gravel drive and made a path through the woods at the far edge of my property. I was furious. So I put up two posts and a locked chain across my drive.  After the house was finished I removed the chain and posts since it was really annoying having to get out of the car, unlock the chain, drive through and relock the chain, every time I went out or came back. So I've just suffered the two smashed mailboxes, one garbage can and lots of plant damage. I did get compensation for one mailbox (from FedEX by the way).  I must say the FedEx driver was honest about it and came to the door to apologize and give me a phone number to call. It did take several months of wrangling though to get them to pay for a new box.  I didn't charge for a new post or the labor to install it (my sweat) though I probably could have demanded it.

I'm constantly amazed at the ineptitude of some people. Like the town backhoe operator who almost dug into my sewer line (I stopped him about one foot short of disaster), the builder who cut down a large oak tree on my property thinking it was part of the land he needed to clear, the town road department that closed off a drainage pipe causing flooding on my property, the school bus driver who came down the street by mistake and got wedged against the telephone pole at the side of my drive trying to turn around... I could go on.
Then there are the illegal acts... the same contractor that drove the machines on my drive dug a huge pit in the back yard of the house he was building and started to use the bulldozer to push all the construction debris into the hole and bury it. A neighbor saw what was going on and called me to double check. We called the town and within 5 minutes the town engineer drove up to stop him. If he had succeeded, all that stuff would have decayed, poisoned and contaminated our wells.

OK, I'm done.  That felt good. Jim, you're right, this should be in Community under "Stress Relief".  

[jcarter]

Egads!
New Jersey, gee if they did that in Maine, the bulldozer or construction equiment or driver, would be, well lets say, 'not operable' the next morning.

I still havent gotten any of these emails on either my regular email nor my gmail.  But I will know what to look for and to trash it right away, thanks for the warnings.

Speaking of malware and interesting things, I heard an odd news story here this morning, I will put it in a new thread.  Our news and weather guys got way off the track and had a good laugh about it.
coming later,
Jane

[Xairbusdriver]

"Yes, Virginia, there are idiots out there...and they VOTE!"