More unneeded stress! - "Paperless Post" - whatever that is!

[UTUSN]

One of my most high maintenance cousins just sent this thing, "You're exclusively invited" via something called Paperless Post. It shows only a graphic of a mailing envelop "addressed to" Special Occasion and a "stamp" location that says Paperless Post. Clicking on it results in a crapfest of verifying-you're-a-human, picking an email or phone provider to sign-in with, ending up with a display of four numbers to pick one from that supposedly arrived separately at some unknown place. After multiple tries, finally arrived at a Download option and did that but the file in the Downloads doesn't open.

*** But to top it off, got "critical" warnings from (Google?) saying that somebody has been trying to sign in and asking whether it was I. Not only that, but then a never-before-seen blue screen took over with a "20% Done" saying that it needed to restart while (who?) was collecting error information. After waiting a long while with the 20% unchanging and somebody operating a cursor over invisible places on the blue screen and my not able to have a cursor, I did a Ctl-Alt-Del and did my own restart. Things seem normal.

Back at the envelop, apparently I have some kind of access because little popups are telling me that so-and-so downloaded, then somebody else accessed their invitation, and somebody else began downloading, and on and on. It's apparently a big event, all with people I don't know. In fact I barely know my cousin and her husband.

It's probably a birthday or their anniversary of many years, but it's not my thing. I'll probably send a shot-in-the-dark card without a date since I don't know any date. But I feel pressured to be curious, so if anybody knows what the problem with opening the Download, I'll give it a whack. Thanks.

[ret5hd]

1. sounds like a hacking attempt to me...

i’d call cousin whoever and ask WTF is going on.

even odds cousin whoever doesn’t know either.

[UTUSN]

2. I'm usually paranoid, but this time the cousin's info & mine fit and my anti-virus

and Windows say there's no threat, plus that it's popping up names of other recipients. And my High Maintenance cousin is likely to use something like this that is extra fancy to impress.

[John1956PA]

3. Your cousin feels that it is a chic means to present her overture. You are wise to reply with a snail mail card.

[UTUSN]

4. Hah, funny chic peeps!

[Tasmanian Devil]

5. Sounds like a forgery to me

Sounds a lot like your cousin's address book was compromised and the malware used their contacts to send out phishing attempts. I.e. odds are that the email/message came from hackers and not your cousin.

[UTUSN]

6. So the dozen times I clicked & signed in compromised me, hence the Blue Screen?

The Blue Screen had a Microsoft .com address on it. And my scans say no probs. I still have the email in my gmail, should I delete it?

[Tasmanian Devil]

7. Phone your cousin

Use this an excuse to give your cousin a phone call and see if they sent it. If not, then yeah, I'd take the opportunity to change passwords on all the logins you gave out.

Another tool is to look carefully at the URL's embedded in the links and raw email headers. With practice you can tell malware from legitimate links, but it's not trivial.