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email account hijacking

post #1 of 21
9/29/10 at 2:18pm
Thread Starter 
I have gotten several of those "Check This Out" emails that when you click on them are offshore Viagra places. These emails come from people I know. Their accounts are hijacked and the email goes to their address book recipients. This happened today to my wife. A link to a viagra page went out from her email account to dozens of people. She had nothing to do with it (at least that's what she said ), but seriously, how do you fraud-proof your account to keep this from happening. She has an AOL account. I have a Gmail account, fwiw.
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post #2 of 21
9/29/10 at 2:23pm
I didn't close-down my old hotmail account when I moved to MobileMe several years ago. I then spammed everyone I know, recommending a particular Viagra retailer.
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post #3 of 21
9/29/10 at 2:26pm
Thread Starter 
I can see this being a problem with mass Webmail providers. Is it a problem with gmail as well?
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post #4 of 21
9/29/10 at 4:22pm
Use a complex password. Like !44$spoomafoo
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post #5 of 21
9/29/10 at 4:29pm
It's happened to a few people I know....
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post #6 of 21
9/29/10 at 5:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by unjung View Post
Use a complex password. Like !44$spoomafoo

Copied. Thanks!
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post #7 of 21
9/29/10 at 6:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu View Post
I have gotten several of those "Check This Out" emails that when you click on them are offshore Viagra places. These emails come from people I know. Their accounts are hijacked and the email goes to their address book recipients. This happened today to my wife. A link to a viagra page went out from her email account to dozens of people. She had nothing to do with it (at least that's what she said ), but seriously, how do you fraud-proof your account to keep this from happening. She has an AOL account. I have a Gmail account, fwiw.

1. Get her to switch from AOL. Last time I checked (which, admittedly, was several years ago) it doesn't support SSL connections to the web server.
1b. Get her on GMail, which does.
2. Get her to use a password that isn't your dog's name.
3. GMail offers "account history" at the very bottom, where you can see the last IPs that have logged in. If something strange appears, change password.
4. Tell her to not be dumb and stop clicking on random e-mails and downloading random shit from unverified sources.

fin.
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post #8 of 21
9/29/10 at 6:51pm
For it to happen, it usually requires one of the following things:
-You gave out your password to a phishing site.
-Your browser was somehow hijacked and it skimmed the password when you logged in (similar to phishing)
-You have some sort of trojan/virus on your computer that skimmed your password
-You used the same username and password on another site. This could be a sketchy site or a legit site that got hacked (and is a good reason to use separate passwords for important shit). It is pretty common that when somebody gets a list of usernames and passwords, they start trying to use them on the popular mail sites. It makes it even easier if you had to provide your email address to sign up (and its not that hard to make some simple image posting site like imageshack that is just a front for stealing passwords).

The other option involves the mail provider being hacked or exploited...this one you can't really do anything about (other than using a better provider).
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post #9 of 21
9/30/10 at 8:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by unjung View Post
spoomafoo

This sounds like the title of a SF spoofed porno.
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post #10 of 21
9/30/10 at 9:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustinW View Post
Copied. Thanks!

Hey brah, can I have your email?
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post #11 of 21
10/1/10 at 10:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustinW View Post
I didn't close-down my old hotmail account when I moved to MobileMe several years ago. I then spammed everyone I know, recommending a particular Viagra retailer.

You Justin am usual viagra user. Jajajaja

That kicked my ass .
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post #12 of 21
10/1/10 at 11:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpallaCamiccia View Post
You Justin am usual viagra user. Jajajaja

That kicked my ass .

If you send a message to my old address I'll send you a few thousand emails to hook you up
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post #13 of 21
10/1/10 at 11:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustinW View Post
If you send a message to my old address I'll send you a few thousand emails to hook you up

Thanks, but due to my mediterranean diet I am always charged, no cialis sorry.
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post #14 of 21
10/1/10 at 5:01pm
Shocking!
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post #15 of 21
10/1/10 at 5:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Partisan Fan View Post
Shocking!

WIN!
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