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Something Was Hacked....

jimscott

Tropical Fish Enthusiast
For all those people who received a message that I've been off to Scotland - I haven't. It's bogus. I am not soliciting funds. My antivirus detected something, yesterday, and quarantined whatever it is / was. I also changed my Email password.
 
haha i figured so i was wondering what that was
 
Please return the money I sent you.....
 
HE HE, I got an email from my "cousin Jessie" that said something like:

Subject: RE: HELP!

I'm sorry I didn't tell you me and my family have been travelling. We are in Scotland and all our money and papers have been stolen.

Jessie L...... (correctly spelled last name)


Knowing Jessie has almost zero money it sounded fishy to me so I deleted it but I did call her father and he didn't know anything about her being in Scotland.
 
The 'ol Scotland bit. One of my wife's FB friends was hacked last year and she got the same bit. Only for her they were in the Scotland prison and needed money for bail or something like that.
 
And here I was going to give you an ear full for not taking me with you!! Thought something was up when the email address didn't match the one I had for ya.
 
Aside from what I've already done, how do I get rid of this?
 
aww... I was looking forward to meeting you here in Scotland... I even sent money to the Nigerian account details you sent me to help fund your flight ;)
 
  • #10
Aside from what I've already done, how do I get rid of this?
Rerun the antivirus again on full scan. Install Malwarebytes or/and Spybot Search & Destroy and run them as well. Fix any issues they find.
Keep your system ( I assume its a Windows machine) updated. Don't use Internet Explorer. Use Firefox with no-script add-on and only allow trusted sites.
This will make it a bit harder for malware and viruses to latch on to your machine.

However, If you want to step it up consider abandoning Windows :) it is by design insecure.
 
  • #11
Its actually pretty unlikely anything was hacked..unlikely that anyone actually broke into any of your accounts..
they dont actaully need any access to your email account to send out these messages..all they need is your email address itself, and your name, which is very easy to get..the spam/scam email was "spoofed", so it *looks* like its coming from you..but if you hit reply on the scam message, it wont actually reply to your email address..it will go somewhere else..

I have been getting spam "from myself" for ages! ;)
its not really from my yahoo mail account, but it looks like it is..
very common..happens all the time.

Scot
 
  • #12
Well he said that something was quarantined on his comp so there is a possibility he got an worm which sent itself to people in his address book. But that will happen if he uses outlook or other popular email client to retrieve e-mail.

Jimscott, was there any attachment in that email sent on your behalf?
 
  • #13
Aside from what I've already done, how do I get rid of this?

Are you using a work or library computer? Let the powers that be know and they can deal with it. Work may restrict your usage after this though.
 
  • #14
I use a home & work pc. A 2.25 hour scan by Spyware Doctor & antivirus came up with nothing this morning.
 
  • #15
I would scan the home system with two or three other scanners. MalawareBytes is good but I've had it miss stuff other scanners picked up and vice-versa. All the big anti-virus publishers offer free online scanning. They usually involve downloading a small client but these uninstall smoothly when done.

Or you can start a thread on some of the free support forums such as MajorGeeks.com or DSLReports.com. If you still have the log of the scan that turned up something post the name of the malware and what scanner you are using. These guys will have you run diagnostic tools and post the results and can pinpoint the infections (if any) and tell you which tools and how to run them specific to the infection.

Many times you can find a thread on the specific infection you have and you can try following the steps posted previously.
 
  • #16
No sooner did I restart the computer did I get an alert from Spyware Doctor, stating that someobe was trying to gain access. It blocked the attempt.
 
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