Has anyone had to deal with the Postal Service fraudulent email?

I got an email a few days ago saying that a package i sent on a previous date had been adressed incorrectly, to open the attachment and print a reciept or something and bring it to a USPS office. It looked official, was sent by support@usps.com, had the Postal service seal and everything. Well, my mom opened the attachment, and it was a zip file, and nothing really happened at first. Today I suspected something was up. Printed the email, took it to the post office. Some guy was in there with the exact same email. The clerks there had no clue and said the emails were fake and the attachment was probably a virus. Sure enough, i get home, check the usps website (on my laptop) and see a warning on the page saying not to open emails claiming that a package was mis-shipped by the postal service blah blah blah. I go back on the fam. computer... the account that opened the attachment is totally fuxxated... unresponsive, black screen, error messages galor.



I had opened the attachment on the laptop that i am using rite now as well, but so far nothing. I have windows 7 but my mcafee is expired, but i still get some protection from dell, internet explorer, the mcafee program, and norton. so far, no notifications.



i am scared to shut down or restart, because that is when the virus hit the fam. computer, a gateway w/ windows before vista.. cant remember what it was.



Has anyone dealt with this virus/ attachment thing yet? im scared for my laptop and docs, because i only have one account on the laptop and no backup yet. I'll leave it running 4 the time being.



any help?Has anyone had to deal with the Postal Service fraudulent email?
Assume that you have been hacked by a malicious program. Do not use either of your computers for any access to any website that requires a password; you are at risk of someone hijacking your web accounts. Especially do not go to a bank or credit card or credit union website. There are a class of criminal malware called the Zeus Banking Trojans that are designed specifically to steal banking information.



And begin the long process of starting over.



These scammers try all kinds of tricks to get people to click on their attachments, which are programs designed to give control of your computer to a remote computer elsewhere on the Internet, and the remote computer then loads its "payload" which could be a botnet for spam, or a keylogger that is designed to capture passwords for bank accounts or other personal information.



The best thing to do is to start over. Copy all of your important data to DVDs, CDs, external hard drives, and / or portable hard drives. Find the factory discs for your computer. Get a copy of KillDisk.



Then use the KillDisk program to completely erase your hard drive. This will wipe out any malicious software.



Then use the factory discs and re-install the factory-supplied software, and begin setting up the computer again the way you used to have it.



The people who create this malicious software keep re-writing it so the anti-malware companies have a harder time finding all the specific files and also removing it from your computer. It is actually faster to start over and know you are clean of malware, than to run anti-malware programs over and over hoping to have removed all the malware.



For more information about the scourge of these criminals, you can read various reports on Brian Krebs' website at



http://krebsonsecurity.com/



There is an article about Brian on Wikipedia too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_KrebsHas anyone had to deal with the Postal Service fraudulent email?
I got the same thing and deleted it. I didn't have to worry anyway since I have a Mac. The same fraud was run with UPS, Fed Ex emails and so on for the last year. It installs a keylogger or turns your computer into a spambot, not sure which. Check the various websites for Symantec etc. They'll have a tool to remove it.