The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a warning to consumers who receive e-mails that appear to originate from the FTC’s fraud division: these are actually e-mail scams and should not be opened by consumers.

The FTC further warned that the e-mail contains an attachment that can download a virus to the consumer’s PC when the attachment is clicked on.  The e-mail contains the FTC’s government seal, but there are misspellings and grammatical errors in the message. Its e-mail address is listed as originating from “”  . The e-mail appears to reference a complaint that the user has filed with the FTC and includes a phony sender’s address that appears authentic when users click on the attachment.  The FTC indicated that when the virus is installed onto a user’s PC it installs a “key logger” that can potentially steal passwords and other account information on the user’s PC, and possibly lead to the user’s identity theft.

The FTC is asking everyone who receives an e-mail of this type to forward the e-mail to and to then permanently delete it from their e-mail.

Get more info at the FTC web site here.