Hacking...............

[Oscar]

I've had a dreadful scare recently.

Last year, I was the 'honoured' recipient of one of the Nigerian scams, accessing my contact list and asking for money. I changed e-mail; accounts and as a birthday prezzie, was given a lovely new laptop.

Fine, until last week, when I became aware that a 'failure notice' had been served on one of my e-mail contacts to whom I knew that I hadn't written to for some time. So, I accessed the notification record from the e-mail provider, to see, to my horror, that my account had been accessed from Venezuala, Japan and Spain.

As per advice from Y****. I have changed my password and as of this moment, all is well, but it leaves me feeling as if someone's intruded in my life and I don't like it!!

Gwyn

[It_Is_I_Leclerc]

I had the same problem, google sent me an email to check my account I found out that someone in the USA had accessed one of my email accounts 3 times in the previous 3 weeks. I had to change all my passwords etc.
It really peed me off especially when I forgot my new password when I was trying to get my emails on my phone

L

[Lindsay]

My daughter had a similar problem last week - her hotmail account was blocked because of 'suspicious activity' and unfortunately the back-up email address to which Hotmail sent the unblock code no longer exists. She's had to set a new address - it's a right palaver to notify everyone.

[TrevorFranklin]

These emails are FAKE!
The actual term for these are 'Phishing emails'

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx

They are designed to scare you into visiting a site and entering your account and password.
Once you have done that, your HAVE done exactly what the sender intended, they now have your details and will set up an automatic program on a server to automatically log into your account and spam or send virus infections to everyone in your address book or email addresses in your inbox/sent items box.

NEVER believe them!

What is even worse is that you also open yourself to later ID theft, as most commonly people use the same IDs and passwords on Socila network sites etc, so an actual hacker can then harvest information that could help them steal your ID for criminal use.

[Lindsay]

In my daughter's case it wasn't an email, she couldn't sign on to her email account at all - just got a message from hotmail to say her account was blocked when she tried.

[Nightryder]

Oscar If you only changed your password for your email account it could still be compromised,when my gmail account was hacked an email was sent to all on my contacts list saying I was in Scotland doing family research that id been mugged at gun point & to send money via a western union account, then they deleted my contacts list,luckily my daughter received this email & rang me straight away, I changed my email password but gmail would never work properly, no emails I sent were ever received & all incomming mail went straight to trash, nothing I did would fix it & as there is no help available from google I deleted the account & I am now with aol & I keep a very limited contacts list,so if this happens again the only emails that could be sent are to family who would know straight away it was a hoax.
Jenn

[Oscar]

Thanks Jenn - I too now keep a very limited contacts list and have a very convoluted password. To date, no more problems.............

Gwyn

[clematised]

If I ever get an e mail from a contact that I suspect is suspicious I always let the person know that I think their account has been hacked, it is usually easy to see from the first line it is suspicious so never open them.

Edna