we have a warning for you about an email that looks like an official notice from the government. but it could wreak havoc with your computer. it's going out nationwide and it's under investigation by the feds. lynda baquero reports on how you can avoid becoming the next victim. as head of her own public relations company, janet appel spends most of her day on her computer. recently she got an email that looked like it was from the internal revenue service...with an i-r-s-dot-gov domain. subject line: recalculation of her taxes. "Being a skeptic, I did doubt it, but I was also concerned that maybe it was legitimate and that maybe I should open it." when she opened the attachment: "Within five to ten minutes, the computer just froze and had all kinds of swirls and patterns on it." HER COMPUTER S INFECTED with a virus. she says it cost her 3-hundred dollars to fix the problem. to minute thumbnail 12:38 pm demonstrate what happened, we took another laptop, and like a computer demolition derby, opened the same attachment. the screen says "windows detected a hard disk problem" and then a series of error messages appear. but all of that is a program run by the virus. denzel fearon is with the computer crimes unit of the new YORK STATE POLICE. Lynda: "Why are they doing this? What do they want? What are they getting out of it?" "Money. That's what they want." It lets the user know that a person has possibly been infected with a virus and in order to get rid of that virus you have to pay money to purchase what is a fake anti-virus removal program. And the way the software works, it's really quite damaging. Where it'sery very hard to remove this program without making that purchase." investigators believe the emails may be coming from eastern europe. i-r-s officials say they never minute thumbnail 12:39 pm contact a taxpayer by email.. so if you receive one, you are most likely looking at a scam.
