ROGER GREEN INVITES is a virus. If you receive an email from me with that heading, please DO NOT open it.
Wednesday, May 28: I was working on my book review for the following Tuesday at the Albany Public Library. My wife got an email, supposedly from someone we knew from church, with a graphic, [NAME] INVITES. She couldn’t open it, which is not unusual.
So she sent it to me, which I could open, and like a distracted idiot, clicked on the .EXE attachment. It didn’t seem to have any effect.
But a couple of hours later, my computer froze. That “Windows is at 11%” didn’t change. I Googled the situation, attempted some remedies, but nothing worked. I called a good friend who was more tech-savvy than I, and he suggested some solutions that didn’t work. Ultimately, I went out to dinner with my wife. By the time we returned about four hours later, everything seemed to be working again. HA!
I didn’t buy that!
Friday, May 30: I check my messages in the morning and discover that $1,013.90 has been charged to my PayPal account. I called them. They said that, initially, they had rejected it, but then that “I” had contacted them to assure them that I had purchased it. But I was asleep at the time . They backed it out.
Then I contacted Discover because the purchase rolled over to them. “My” purchase of the same amount went to PayPal Vanillagift around 12:44 a.m. when I was asleep.
They said my card was compromised and then I’d have to cancel the card and have to get a new card. this is always a complicated issue when I lost my wallet in November 2023 I had to contact all the vendors for whom I had paid my discover my payments to vendors automatically to my Discover Card and it’s so the stuff that was automatically paid notably my cable bill phone cable bill this was OK because they were just rolled over to the next thing for anything that was irregular I can’t let them more of a hassle and I had to change the numbers anyway
I didn’t send that!
Starting at about 2 a.m. and going on for the next three days, I began receiving emails (at least 60), occasional texts, and at least two phone calls with the same message. “I can’t open this invite,” or “I’m not sure if I should open this invite.” I replied immediately that they should delete it.
The interesting thing was that at least a couple of people were very disappointed that it wasn’t the real invitation. They were looking forward to finding out what the big news was. Obviously, I need to throw more parties.
Saturday, May 31: I took my computer to the Best Buy Geek Squad. Evidently, my antivirus software worked, albeit after the fact. Still, I removed it permanently.
Sunday, June 1: I asked a techie I knew what I might do. He suggested sending an email to the folks from my Sent folder. But there is no Sent item from that time frame.
So, this has been an enormous time suck, enervating, not to mention a bit of self-loathing for being inattentive at best, and, at worst, stupid.
I detest viruses and it really makes me furious when someone uses/steals one of our accounts. You are right – it is a major deal to have to change all of those things!! I’m sorry that you are going through this.
Roger, I am sorry this has happened to you. You are not stupid. These scammers are very good!
I am not sure what type of computer you have…if it is Windows, this type of thing happened to me years ago. Not the money part, but the virus.
I have a new computer now…Google Chrome. Thankfully Chrome warns me about things like this, I find it safer. However, nothing is perfect!
Please take good care of yourself and do not open any emails or links unless you know what they are.
Warm greetings from Montreal, Canada.