Hackers, Lost Passport and Purse, An Online E-Mail Nightmare
Posted: Monday, November 15, 2010
by Marijo Phelps
I got an e-mail from a writer friend who was saying since her hubby updated their search engine they’d had increasing problems with their computer. She mentioned that her e-mail account provider had written stating there were problems. They wanted to verify her account information.
I was writing her back commiserating with her when Outlook binged and I had another e-mail with her address on it. This one said she’d had to take a sudden trip to the UK, her purse had been stolen along with her passport and could I please wire her $2,500 so she could get things taken care of then come home. I knew she wasn’t in the UK.
Thankfully, she and I had met each other “face to face" and I had her phone number in my address book. Placing a quick call I told her that I thought she’d been hacked. She told me that her e-mail inbox had letters in it including one from their bank, with all their banking information and all those inbox letters were gone from the inbox. She had not touched those letters.
“I will let you off the phone right away you need to call your bank and tell them not to allow any money to be taken out of your account! And you should call anyone else whose information might be on your computer just in case."
“Oh, my, this is a nightmare. If I call now I can reach the bank just before they close!"
“Keep me posted, I’ll be praying!"
After we hung up I sent an e-mail to everyone on both of my address lists explaining what happened and warning them about this scam. Several wrote back to say it had happened to them or a friend, one even had a relative who wired the $2500 not realizing it was going into the hands of hackers.
Two days have passed and my friend has had a computer person trying to fix the computer all this time. She and her husband still can’t use their computer or e-mail. Part of the problem is that they can’t recall what answers they put in to the security questions. You remember those. Who was your favorite teacher? What is your pet’s name? Who was your favorite aunt twice removed by marriage.
We have so many passwords and accounts now days. It is not wise to use the same password for all accounts for obvious reasons, yet it is helpful for your recall until you get hacked.
Sure you wrote all your passwords down ….. they are stacked about 3 inches deep in a drawer. Then the password is changed and you don’t find the old one but keep moving on. You only find the old one when you need the current one and then it doesn’t work. I am sure many can relate to this.
I now place my password and date the paper placing it in the drawer, but it is still in the drawer. I don’t think I have ever written down the security questions. Then someone will ask you for that information. What is your pet’s name, being cat woman that one would get tricky.
The best password I ever had was one set up by a computer literate friend – we chose the name of his pet and some numbers which mean something to me. I not only remembered it but it has continued to work.
What did my friend and I learn from all of this? Your e-mail provider will never, ever ask for your password except on their site when you want to change the password. When they write you they will call you by name and not just say something like “dear hotmail customer". A good thing to remember is to go to their link and not use the link supplied in an e-mail. Yes, hackers can give you a link which looks real, but is actually one the hacker set up to reel you in.
Places like Pay Pal will always address you by your name as it appears on your account and not “dear Pay Pal Customer". I got a “dear Pay Pal Customer" letter recently which said they were concerned about unauthorized use of my Pay Pal account. I went back to find my original Pay Pal information and clicked that link, not the one of the suspect e-mail. I wrote to see if they sent it. They did not. It was another attempt to get my information by “verifying" my account on the hacker’s link. I got shook up and cancelled my Pay Pal account.
Caution is the by word. Always double check before giving out any information and never, ever give out your password.
Too bad these hackers couldn’t use their brilliant minds to make something helpful to the internet user but I guess being helpful is not in their vocabulary.
Please let the readers know if you have had a similar experience and some other hints on how to avoid this awful happening.
(C) Marijo Phelps all rights reserved. Use with proper credits.
Marijo Phelps,saved by Jesus grace in 1974, from 9 years atheism into His loving arms. She is wanting to spread the good news about His redemptive plan for our lives through written media. Her name is pronounced Mary Jo. She was an RN for 23+ years, missionary with YWAM,statistical analyst for Every Home for Christ 9 years. Her first poem published when she was four years old. (her mom had much to do with that!) She has been writing ever since.
Her new blog can be found: http://myincrediblelord.blogspot.com
Her new blog can be found: http://myincrediblelord.blogspot.com
This Article has been viewed 1,555 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
More commentsMarijo,
How are you and mick? I had been away from SW for few month. But every time I get one of these e-mail I just deleted. your bank or any e-mail provides will get in contac with you if that are in need to tell you something.
never thrust an email that you feel is doesn't come from the indicated person, thrust your guts feeling.
Thanks,
Jose COh, I have missed you and Kim so much! We ended up in your neck of the woods for our 25th anniversary celebration and tried to e-mail you before we came but couldn't get you! We went to W. Colorado, Utah, Wy, MT, Idaho and back to Colorado all in 7 days - talk about a whirlwind trip but it was gorgeous! How are you both?We are doing OK trying to survive, It is to bad we were not able to communicate but for next time I will send you my phone number privately.
It is good to be back, read my article.
ThanksI did - very touching and too many are in the same straits right now. Mick is finally working full time for the moment.
As far as Internet is concerned, awareness is a must. This is a very informative message to alert us about hackers everywhere to attack the innocent.Thanks Hilda - my friend will probably write about it too once she gets her computer back!
Hi Marijo.
I too have received quite a few of those "Paypal" e-mails. I usually just report them. Sometimes I will click on the link first to see if it has already be reported as a phishing scam. Frequently they have.
Great article and good cautionary tale for everyone.
Hugs,
DianneThey still haven't gotten their computer back and functioning! It is terrible - thanks for reading and your encouragement!
I pry i never have to go thru all thatWelcome to Searchwarp! They are still working on getting back on-line again - it is terrible! thanks for reading and your comments too.
Well done for being alert enough to realize that it was a scam, Marijo. Thanks for writing this article, I do sometimes click the links in emails, although I don't think I've ever done it with Paypal. I'm never going to do it again. Hackers scare me, they seem so neurotic to me, invading people's privacy sometimes for financial gain and sometimes just to make their lives a misery.Yes, definitely a different breed of cat (or quoting mogama "they are criminals!"
Along these same lines, one must also be very careful about telephone calls from so-called charities asking for donations. Never, Never, Never give your credit card number on the phone. You really have no idea who you are actually talking to. Ask the caller to send you some literature of their charity or better yet, look up the charity on the internet and find their ligitimate website.You are So right - I ask for literature and maybe one out of 10 times we actually get it in the mail.
Hi Marijo! Thank God I haven't experienced anything like this but am always worried it will happen someday and I'll get caught because I wasn't paying enough attention. Thanks!The update is that they couldn't salvage the old account so she lost all her e-mail addresses, contacts etc and started over with a different e-mail provider... really time consuming and sad - I still don't know about their account information for banking etc. I am sure she will write a piece about this too from her perspective. thanks for reading and your comments Terri.
I received one such email from Hotmail asking for my bank account no., email password, residential address and phone number because Hotmail was doing a re-verification of customers and it looked so real that I was almost about to fall for it. Some inner voice asked me to think before I reply this email and the wiser side of "me" deleted the email. This can be really risky. Thanks for sharing this experience with us.That sounds like the one she got and answered - you are blessed that you didn't answer it - such grief they have had.
A wonderful story for informing people of all the scams out there. There are so many scams and the most vulnerable people are the seniors. I think we ought to put your friends on a prayer list and unleash the power of prayer on their problem. Keep up the good work Marijo, you are truly a blessing to many.That's a great idea - I will e-mail you!
We all thank you for writing this article. Identity theft, hacking into our computers and systems, and anything to thieve and complicate our lives, viruses, trojans and more is dispicable. These hackers not only get into our systems but regularly hack into big business and ultimately much worse, into the government's systems. Scary stuff this year and yet we cannot permit the risk to interfere in our lives. You can purchase into an identify theft "insurance" readily offered now, you can routinely back up your system, you can run your own external hard drive to back up all your information and keep sensitive information only on that hard drive of on a flash drive, you can encrypt the files on your computer that are sensitive. Merely keeping it in your desk can also be dangerous just in case you are hit by a thief. I have heaps of passwords for all the numerous sites - I have worked out a table in Word that has website name, address & phone number if I sometimes use it, and any email to reach someone at that website. For each site I also list my email I associate with each website, the password I use for that site, the security picture and/or question plus the answer, my userID and anything I might need to access that website. I list this information for each of the sites I access. Anything that has to do with this document is never worked directly on my computer hard drive; instead I write it directly on my external plug in hard drive or in a pinch on a flash drive. When I exist my PC I have my browser set to clear all history each time. Finally and perhaps most importantly, I run a very tight firewall and virus program. Every email that comes in to my primary emails, and I have quite a few because of my websites, are checked by my virus scanner as well as my outgoing. My cable company has a low level virus protection and my earthlink does too. I am fastidious about maintaining and scanning and updating. I also run a registry cleaner.
Another thought about pfischers. Many attempts have been made on my various emails. I use PayPal and their option to pay with credit cards as well for my merchant account. You can well imagine how often they try to hit this. Firstly, PayPal is actually very safe - a party pays for their purchase I see NO PERSONAL INFORMATION nor do I want to handle credit cards. PayPal allows me to dispense with customer payment information. I have no need to see or handle it. In this way even if I'm hacked, my customer information is unavailable. Always! The attempts to entice me to give personal information will not work with me, ever, since I refuse to give information UNLESS I originate the call or transaction. Emails requesting my information or warning me that my account has been temporarily frozen or any other questionable info falls on my deaf ears and I immediately forward it to the spoof or fraud areas. Secondly, I believe that you can mouse over the link provided (NEVER DIRECTLY CLICK ON A LINK BECAUSE YOU CAN GET A COOKIE FROM THE HACKER BUMS). In this way, you can already see where the link takes you. If it is weird or not the correct link, trash the thing. Can you tell this article is a hot topic for me? I'll do what I can to prevent having a problem in the first place. Thirdly, our various Staples offer a free tuneup every now and then. My PC is generally very clean. I avail myself of this service annually at one of the stores. I stay right with my PC as it's worked on and ask my questions directly. Works well and I learn much.
More comments
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.