Hacked Email Addresses? You’re Not Alone!
Posted by alharlow on March 10, 2011
I received an email which looked like it was from my sister the other day. She wanted me to click on a link. When I did the “hover check” (explained in another one of my other blogs), the actual address it was going to was not the address displayed.
“Ah, someone must have hacked into her address book at MSN!”, I thought. No big deal, right?
Well an old friend of her’s was pretty upset, she explained when I wrote her an email saying she’d been hacked into. Needless to say, there were a lot of unhappy people.
It’s a harmless hack, unless you make the mistake and click on the link. But we all know better than that, don’t we?
Well, then Sara, my other sister’s step daughter, sent me this email. Okay, another link she was indicating for me to click on. “Wow, Yahoo got hacked into too! Unbelievable!“ I let Sara know this was going on. She wasn’t aware of it and when I told her, she too was pretty upset.
“Not to worry”, I assured her. “Just close the account at Yahoo. You really should not be storing personal information on these public servers anyway, which are always targets.”
So then today, I got this email from Tom, a local photographer. Poor Tom. Not good. I like the advise he gives though, and anyone who wants a real reliable email system should call iNamics, I think. Of course, I’m bias, but I know we can’t be broken into.
Here’s what Tom’s email says:
You probably received an email that appeared to come from me, requesting help while I was supposedly stuck in London. It was definitely a scam after my email account was hacked. I hope you were not taken in. You can learn more about the hacking in my blog post:
http://tomszabo.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/the-story-about-being-hacked/
My email, address book and Face Book account have been restored. All seems back to normal. In the process of restoring my address book, I made some changes to my broadcast list(s). In doing so, I discovered a procedural gap in my office. That “gap” means you may have been restored to the broadcast list for my studio. If that occurred, I apologize in advance. I’ve made a change to keep that from happening in the future.
If you wish to be removed from my studio email broadcast list, please reply with the phrase “Opt-Out” in the subject line of your email. Again my apologies for that.
Please pay attention to incoming emails, looking for suspicious email that might make you a victim. That should be a normal process for you, but with my address book hacked, you want to pay particular attention.
Some additional helpful hints:
Talk with your computer technician about the status of your inter net security on your system.
Don’t forget about backing up your data files!
Good luck to you and thanks for your patience and support.
If you need help with your email and want a more reliable and spam free email system for you and your office, call me at (216) 916-0196 ext. 3015.
The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, a leader in website development, hosting and computer repair in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com. This blog is also published at http://inamics.wordpress.com.
