Emails been hacked!

[Gary Prentice]

Someone got into my email account yesterday morning, from both Singapore and Nigeria, and emailed just about everyone I have ever corresponded with.

 

The attachment appeared dodgy to most peoples protection and also appears difficult or impossible to open, so I hope no harm has been done.

 

How do I prevent it? My password was strong (apparently not strong enough) with 14 characters and numbers. We run Bullguard on the laptops and PCs, but I don't think we have any protection on the iphones.

 

The email system is Google, using [email protected]

 

From my own point of view, responding to countless emails and phone calls, it's a nightmare, so I'd like to beef things up.

[hamilton32]

Somebody hacked my account not long ago. They sent emails to my grandmother and uncle pretending to be me begging for money claiming i desperately needed financial help.

 

My grandmother sent money to my account and then I got an email off 'her' asking me to deposit the money in a western union account in nigeria as she couldnt get to the bank in wellington.

 

I knew something was up and contacted her and the police.

It turned out that after she had sent me the money to my account she got another email off 'me' saying it had all been eaten by my overdraft and could she send the same amount to my western union account. Naively she did and the bastards got away with 2.5k.

 

They had been filtering my emails so they went straight in a folder i don't use and then deleting sent and received messages.

Once I knew something was up I did a search and found one where they had pretended to be me and mentioned my girlfriends name etc they also knew my grandma lived in NZ.

 

Scary stuff, apparently its the most common crime now (online fraud) they have big gangs in these places dedicated to hacking.

 

She's a kind old lady, obviously I should have just asked for money all these years and i'd have got it. ha. Joking aside. I'm a lot more careful now and so is my grandma.

You never think it will happen to you. But yeah, be careful of the electronic trail you leave and make sure your security is up to date!

[Darrin Turnbull]

That's a pain . Don't know anything about computers but maybe this could be of help.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/03/what-to-do-email-hacked-how-to-prevent

From the guardian newspaper ( Samuel Gibbs )

There's also , ask jack ( Jack Schofield ) from the same newspaper.

Good luck.

[Gary Prentice]

I only had a change in settings, any email that came to me went straight to the bin. Maybe an attempt to prevent the alarm being raised about the unauthorized access.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

I only had a change in settings, any email that came to me went straight to the bin. Maybe an attempt to prevent the alarm being raised about the unauthorized access.

 

I got one from you Gary, it was disguised as a dropbox document and simply said, "can you find the reference."

 

It had a touch of plausibility about it but since we hadn't recently been talking about any references I didn't open it - planned to drop you a message on here to check if it was pucker first.

[Burgess]

Is the password unique for the email system?

[Gary Prentice]

Is the password unique for the email system?

 

I think so:confused1: but I do forget passwords and have to renew them, so might have re-used it doh

 

Think I need to start to look at the whole thing and start from scratch on all my online stuff.

[Gary Prentice]

Maybe not 'odd', but there is no record of any emails actually sent, from my 'Sent' box. I started getting phone calls within probably ten minutes and asked people to forward 'my message' - none of which came (well, they actually went straight to the bin!

[easy-lift guy]

I recommend sacking your existing service provider and finding a new one. Change your user name and all of your passwords ASAP. Get into the habit of changing your passwords for all of your accounts on a regular basis.

easy-lift guy

[openspaceman]

I think so:confused1: but I do forget passwords and have to renew them, so might have re-used it doh

 

Think I need to start to look at the whole thing and start from scratch on all my online stuff.

 

Long ago if you used a wireless connection with simple POP e-mail and SMTP then the password was sent unencrypted and anyone on the network could read the password using something like wireshark . This may still be the case.