I just received an email supposedly from Smith Micro notifying me of a full refund.

It did not state what it was on, just a link for full details and I don't think it is a SM site.

Did not, and will not click that link...lol.

Yep, I got the same email. Looks like they may have gotten hacked or such. Disconcerting..

I would hope they would announce if they had been hacked.

Just because a fradulent email has an address from a given company doesn't mean that company has been hacked. In fact, odds are it hasn't. Faking an email address that shows up in the "From" field of the recipient's mail program is trivial and doesn't require any great skill or access to the actual sender's account.

My business email account gets a ton of fake emails supposedly from people within the organization. It doesn't mean we've been hacked, it just means that at some point some spider scooped up up a list of email addresses from somewhere online and sent out emails with those addresses faked into them.

Yes, someone using the email but the reply address is not from them.

Unfortunately, someone might think it is and click that link. :(

I am always leery of that sort of email.

If they were giving a refund, they would have your name. :)

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't seen that email yet. Hopefully Gmail picks it up.

I'm not sure how to do it in other emails, but in Gmail you can click the down arrow in the upper left of the email next to where it says 'to me' and view the full headers. It's in here you can tell if an email's been spoofed or not.

For instance, here are the full headers from a legit SM email.

from:  Smith Micro do-not-reply@smithmicro.com
reply-to:  do-not-reply@smithmicro.com
to:  >removed<
date:  Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 5:08 AM
subject:  50% Off Poser Upgrades. Explore New Poser Pro Game Dev
mailed-by:  news.smithmicro.com
signed-by:  smithmicro.com
unsubscribe:  Unsubscribe from this sender

e-mail addresses can be cloned, so you can't always go by that. 

If you look at the link in the message by hovering the mouse over it (the real address will show in the bottom left corner of your browser, regardless of what the text in the message says) then you can usually get an idea if the address looks authentic or not. 

I've been getting a bunch of fake e-mails claiming to be from paypal lately, trying to convince me there's a problem with my account, and i forward every one of them to paypal's fraud dept. They always have some crazy link that should be obvious to just about anybody 

Wasn't there a recent screwup with SM Poser being offered at half off and then being pulled? That email may be related to that. But, don't click it if you're unsure.

Quote - Wasn't there a recent screwup with SM Poser being offered at half off and then being pulled? That email may be related to that. But, don't click it if you're unsure.

The only one I know of for that was here. Rendo put Poser upgrades on sale and promptly stopped the sale the following day. It seems now the GameDev upgrade is on sale.

CP/SM hasn't been hacked - like the paypal ones we all get this uses a spoofed sender. Yes while perhaps more targeted than usual crud like the ones from 'your' bank, if you look carefully at these theres always pointers... It doesn't have your name on it. Theres no account details. The english, grammar and spelling is worse than mine :) The url to get your refund goes to a free file sharing service. The zip contains an .scr file.

I've been getting spammed ever since I used "FastSpring", although I'm not saying the spam is related to giving them my information.  In my opinion, FastSpring are a totally pointless third party they use in the purchase process who gets your information before passing you on to your PayPal account.  Once you've done that, you get handled by SM again anyway, so in my opinion, there was no valid reason for using them in the first place other than to extort fees and/or information.

My guess is that either FastSpring or SM got hacked, and in the politest way possible, get this; two things absolutely must change before I'll buy another Poser product:

1 - Ditch the FastSpring third party because I will no longer supply data pointlessly to third parties.  They should try sending customers direct to their PayPal account, this is the accepted practice and works fine.

2 - Ditch Flash because I will not be installing the Adobe Spyware (AKA Flash Player) on my next Windows install.  If the requirement for Flash still exists in the next release, I will not be buying Poser because I won't be able to run it.

I have not had the message as yet and I have never had a problem with Fastspring or SM.

Over the pase 4 years I have had my Paypal account used fraudulently and also the CCard I use for Internet purchases.  Strangely enough I stopped using a particular site some time ago after my CCard was done.  I returned to the site recently and made one purchase and within 24 hours my CCard was done again.  I will not mention the site as I cannot prove anything, and is could be a pure coincidence, but rightly or wrongly, I will not use them again.

You might have a keylogger, Hornet.

I got it too, and submitted it to Support, and SM says it is indeed not from them and is investigating...

Quote -
You might have a keylogger, Hornet.

Nope, no don't think it was a logger, the CCard that got done is only ever used for 3D Internet purchases.  My other cards, bank account and shares have all been clean so far even though they are monitored on line.   It is also the same card I use at Rendo and have been for over 3 years for literally hundreds of transactions with no problem.  One transaction at another store and it is done again just like it was three and a half years ago when I last used that store.  As I say could well be a conicidence but it makes me loathed to try another purchase. 

In fact the reason I use the card in question is because their automatic fraud monitor is first class.  In this instance, when I noticed that my card had transactions not made by me, I went to call them and there was a message on my answer machine asking me to contact the fraud department left eighteen hours earlier.  That was just six hours after I used my card at that store and before that I had made no transactions for over ten days.  I only noticed a few transactions of less than £30 but their sytems had blocked four more for £100 - £300 pounds.  That was a month ago, all false transactions deleted from the account, new card issued and no problems so far.

There's a store I'm intending to use but I'm hesitant to now :-D
Can you tell us the first and last letters of the domain name (not including the .com part)?

If it matches up with what I was intending to use, I can avoid it.

I purposely did not identify the company so giving clues would not be fair.  It was a month ago and I did not mention it at the time as there is nothing I can prove, I just find it suspicious due to the timings.  In fact I was monitoring this card closely just because it had happened before.  My advice is make your purchase, chances are you will be fine.

The only reason I mentioned it was because the suggestion that there were certain companies who must have been hacked and I was just pointing out that there is more than one way to get defrauded on the Internet.  Not that I am knocking the Internet but it has a dark side along with all the benefits.  I am careful with my CCards and tend to reserve them for particular transactions, one for the Internet, one for fuel one for major puchases and so on.  That way I have some idea of the places to beware when a particular card gets done.  Up until now it has only been the Internet one.

As to emails, my email account is petty good at picking up spam, if not, I know my family tree so no long lost aunt or uncle is going to leave me anything.  I am too honest to help someone smuggle money out of a country even it it were true.  I only want the packages I ordered so if someone is trying to deliver a package I know nothing about they can send it back.  I am retired so I have no need to take work acting as a middle man.  I am fairly happy (and too old) with my lot so there is nothing about me I want to enhance and I am too tight with my money to help someone I only know from the Internet.  I am too heartless to send money no matter how sad the sob story (registered charities are an exception) and there is no point is asking me to give my passwords away because the company is doing maintence as I can never remember them anyway.

That covers off the usual suspects but it does mean I still fall for the some scams but they are normally the semi official ones that have been recommended by my bank and other institutions, over the years, only they call it looking after my interest...... when they really mean their interest in taking large chunks of my money.

I've never figured put how they use others email address but once I actually got a scam mail from myself...lol.

Of course I had to let all the people on my mailing lists know that they shoulsd delete it if it came to them.

And someone used my MSN messenger once.

While Iwas chatting with my brother he recieved a chat notice that I sent him a file.

I told him to delete it as I never send anyone a file without telling them before hand that I will.

I never use MSN now. :)

**
@Hornet**
No worries, as long as it's not one of the biggies in the community I'll be ok then.