BY Mel Duvall, Chief Content Officer at CIOZone

Forget about vampires, ghouls and zombies. You were much more likely to receive a fright this year from something lurking in your e-mail.

Just in time for Halloween, security software vendor Proofpoint has come up with a list of the Top 10 Terrifying E-mail Blunders of 2009.

There were the usual crop of Trojan horses and phishing expeditions, but as the surprising list points out, some of the scares go all the way up to White House and the FBI.

In no particular order, here are the top 10 according to Proofpoint.

Trojan Horse Empties Bank Accounts

In September, it was reported that a banking Trojan horse, dubbed URLZone, had thwarted fraud detection systems, to enable software to actually steal money while users are logged in to their accounts and display a fake balance.

Victims’ computers were infected either by clicking on a malicious link in an e-mail or visiting a Web site that had been compromised with hidden malware.

FBI Forgery

The wife of FBI director Robert Mueller banned him from online banking after he nearly f