Email Hacked

The technical section

Moderator: Global Moderators

nelmit
Posts: 4002
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:49 pm
Location: Scotland

Email Hacked

Post by nelmit » Thu Dec 17, 2015 12:22 pm

Just a warning to those who have my email in their address book.....I'm afraid my email was hacked this morning so please do not open any emails from me. I have now changed my password and hopefully it won't happen again.

Regards,
Annette

SarahND
Site Admin
Posts: 5635
Joined: Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:47 am
Location: France

Re: Email Hacked

Post by SarahND » Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:17 pm

So sorry, Annette :( It's an annoying part of our world today (she says, having spent quite a bit of time yesterday checking and deleting a huge group of spammers trying to join TS :x )

I didn't receive any emails purporting to be from you, so I hope others didn't either.

[cheers]

Sarah

AndrewP
Site Admin
Posts: 6163
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 1:36 am
Location: Edinburgh

Re: Email Hacked

Post by AndrewP » Fri Dec 18, 2015 1:48 am

I did receive two e-mails purporting to be from Annette (nelmit). They were recognisable as spam, so dismissed with no harm done.

All the best,

AndrewP

nelmit
Posts: 4002
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:49 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Email Hacked

Post by nelmit » Sat Dec 19, 2015 12:49 am

I'm glad no harm was done in my name. My boys did say it was obvious Andrew but I was still worried. I have now changed my password and not before time I realised. I was still using the 8 number/letter combination I was sent when I first registered with Scotlands People back in 2003' :shock: For some reason it stuck in my head right away and because it was so random I thought it made a great password. I still don't understand how my email account was hacked but I think I will be changing my password a bit more often from now on. :)

Regards,
Annette

JustJean
Posts: 2520
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 12:52 am
Location: Maine USA

Re: Email Hacked

Post by JustJean » Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:00 pm

I too received one of those pesky emails last week supposedly from you....but nae worries. It was dispatched to the bin straight away.

Have a Merry Christmas and Merry? Happy? Boxing Day when it comes!! :D

Best wishes
Jean

nelmit
Posts: 4002
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:49 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Email Hacked

Post by nelmit » Sun Dec 27, 2015 9:01 pm

JustJean wrote:I too received one of those pesky emails last week supposedly from you....but nae worries. It was dispatched to the bin straight away.

Have a Merry Christmas and Merry? Happy? Boxing Day when it comes!! :D

Best wishes
Jean
Yes Jean everybody assured me that it was really obvious it wasn't from me.

Hope you and your family had a great Christmas.

Best wishes,
Annette

Alan SHARP
Posts: 612
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:41 pm
Location: Waikato, New Zealand

Re: Email Hacked

Post by Alan SHARP » Tue Dec 29, 2015 11:42 am

Greetings.

One of my email accounts was obtained over 16 years ago so that I could start doing a search behind the Iron Curtain for scientific farming papers that I had had English Abstracts on since 1964.
I choose to use a [not so common] subject for my email handle [not my name] and by getting my own email address, was not sharing with my daughter on her account. It proved to be a wise decision.

I used a scatter gun approach of emailing any institution that may have been in a position to help me [in English] and eventually in TOMSK in Siberia USSR, I finally made contact with a Librarian who was able to supply me with 17 A4 pages written in Russian. Getting that translated was a story in itself. But what I also got was growing amounts of unsolicited links to porn sites. My address had been sold by a recipient.

Eventually I had to call upon the help of my service provider, when a very bad example of young child porn appeared in the body of an unsolicited email. Since then I’ve made use of the extra advise of my service provider, and the growing number of specialist protection systems.

I limit the number of sites I register with, for both research across the globe, and for business, and do not have social media accounts.

There remains one big problem. My research has taken me many times around the globe, on history and heritage research, genealogy research, farming research, armed services research, and a number of repatriation of personal war time effects research. Therefore my private email accounts will be registered in literally hundreds of peoples address books, whom I’ve long since forgotten, and only exchanged a few emails with. Sooner or later when those address books get compromised I start getting unsolicited emails that at a quick glance appear to be personally addressed and legit. I have also recently deleted an email that appeared to have been sent to me by a person with an unusual surname that I once had contact with in Clyndon Roseneath, but as the greeting was addresses to my object, I have deleted it too.

Fortunately one big give away is when the incoming mail is personally addresses to my OBJECT and not one of my names [Christian/Surname]

If in doubt I always check the properties of the email and the reply address.

In the last three months two local high profile people, in public and community affairs, have had their address book mined, and in the last couple of days I’ve again been getting emails that appear to have been sent to me from ‘Twoo.’ They look as though contacts have been sending me Seasons Greetings using apps. But upon research, find yet again, another dodgy outfit that harvests contact addresses in a manner that some seek to challenge in law.

Be on your guard,

Alan SHARP.

PS. I won't give up research though. New Zealand is in the other side of the world to Siberia, but last autumn I got talking to a man at the beach, when I learnt that he spoke Russian. He was amazed that I had never travelled to Europe but knew a bit about Siberia. He was blown away when I named the Librarian who went out of her way to help me. He stated that for his time at Tomsk State university he had three close mates. She was the wife of one of them. It's indeed a small world when it comes to research, you just have to keep turning over stones to find the answers you seek. The rewards can be great. All the best for the new year.