Okay, so here's the situation. I made the original post on this thread three days ago. Avast Forums are deluged by the hour with posts from laypeople such as myself; this thread has moved down the food-chain and by all rights should have fallen off the radar. This morning, in the Yahoo Email Inbox associated with my Avast Forums account (and indeed my Avast registration), I received an anonymous bit.ly from someone using an Anglo-Saxon name. It was addressed to me by my first name, the name I use here. It contained nothing other than the bit.ly.
I didn't open the link. I wrote back to the sender that I would open it if he/she identified him/herself. For a variety of reasons, one coincidental, I was concerned to find the source before the start of the business day. I jotted the URL and entered it by hand on a Macbook. It took me to a Russian site. The problem is that--unless all Russian sites look alike, which I highly doubt--the site resembles the one that caused me enough worry to make the original post.
The "visit" to the Russian site in the week prior to the Java warning was from an email address different from the address associated with my Avast account: in other words, two extremely odd things have happened. First, I receive, at an email address someone unfamiliar with my computer would have no reason to associate with me, a link verbatim the link I received at the other email address. Second, I receive the anonymous, Anglicized bit.ly at the address associated with Avast Forums.
Would someone tell me if I have a reason to be scared? The only conceivable benign ways this could happen would be 1) if the person from Russia who had dogged me for "subtitling" help at the other email address, and whose links I visited to see if this was some poor dude/girl who really needed help--which caused the panic when I learned about the Java issue-- The only conceivable benign way I could get a URL sent to my Avast-Forum-associated email account would be if this person spent an insane amount of time googling, counter-googling, uber-googling the other email address under which I corresponded with him/her. If he/she then came up with my name, he/she could then conceivably come up with my Avast-Forum-associated email address. That would be insane but benign (if he/she is still in Russia). 2) If Avast Forums makes contact information public, then someone could email me...with a verbatim site sent to an unrelated email address...
I'm not saying the sky is falling. I'm saying I don't know if it is. That's why I'm posting.
Thank you.
