Guys, I am feralmerril and I just rejoined as Bogus Bill. A couple days ago my hotmail said something strange that I would be dropped if I didnt do something. My wife worked on it and set me up with another mail.
This morning my brother in law that I bearly know got a E-mail supposedly from me, begging money saying I was stuck in england! After that, my wife got the same message on her computer!
What do I do? Do I go to the FBI or what?
Bogus Bill

My parents had a similar scam done to them, except it was supposedly my nephew in jail in Canada.

You can try to notify your local police.

I would check with the hotmail folks and see what they have to say. Access them from your new address, though.

Be safe.

Damn Bill, I got the same email, and I sent a lot of money. Just kidding. I would definitely notify the local PD.

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James L. "Jim" Rhiner

Barb, what good could our little department do? Dont you think that it would have to be the nearest FBI? (in st. george) I dont even see how, if someone was dumb enough to, want to send money as whoever is doing this would get the money?
Here is the text of the message:
How are you doing?hope all is well, I"m sorry that i didn't inform you about my traveling to England for a Seminar.I need a favor from you as soon as you receive this e-mail because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money is and other valuable things were kept, i will like you to assist me with a loan urgently. I will be needing the sum of $2,500 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.I will appreciate whatever you can afford to help me with, i'll pay you back as soon as i return. Kindly let me know if you can be of help? so that i can send you the details.
Your reply will be greatly appreciated. Merril
This really is pissing me off! I never begged a dime in my life!

My wife told me she saved a copy of what started all this. Here is the copy. After doing whatever she done, I still couldnt access my hot mail. She set me up with somebody else. My wife is usualy FAR more cautious them me!

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:56:09 +0000




CONFIRM YOUR WINDOWS LIVE ACCOUNT SERVICES. VERIFY YOUR HOTMAIL ACCOUNT NOW TO AVOID IT CLOSED !!!


Dear Account Owner

This is email from Windows Live Hotmail® and we are sending to all account user for safety. Due to the anonymous registration of our account which is causing congestion to our service, so we are shutting down some account and your account was among those to be deleted,so the purpose of this email is for you to verify that you are the owner of this account and you are still using it by filling the information below after clicking on the reply button:

* Username:
* Password:
* Date of Birth:
* Country Or Territory:

Confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 48 hours for security reasons.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Hotmail Team

1st, I have my Brother-in-Law respond back with a message similar to this.

How dare you contact me like this when you're supposed to be in the witness protection program? I've sent your case manager a copy of this message to let him know you've gone off the reservation. If "you know who" tracks you down through your e-mail to me you'll likely end up as fertilizer.

2nd, I'd notify hotmail.

I just called the local FBI, and just like I thought, got shined on. (in a nice way)

Here's a story about the Hotmail phishing. Hotmail password breach blamed on phishing attack | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Microsoft Confirms Hotmail Phishing Attack - Reviews by PC Magazine

And another one Hotmail 'phishing' campaign is small peanuts ? The Register

That's too bad, Merril. Be careful about being emailed to go onto banking sites. They've been known to be fraudulent too. Legitimate sites never send an email asking you to verify your account information.

Try taking this up with the Secret Service. They handle identity theft cases, which this surely is.

Class III

Just as a hint, I always check the grammar and English very carefully. Most of these scams originate in Africa or Russia. Their written command of the language is very suspect. They tend to use the spell correct function but word things very clumsily and leave out articles. Examples; “avoid it closed” & “Due to the anonymous registration of our account which is causing congestion to our service” (What the heck does that mean?)
Usually authentic messages are reasonably well written.
A very healthy dose of skepticism is needed.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

Merril,

Sorry to hear about this. I've gotten many, many emails like that. I contacted my provider, who told me to forward it to them and they would pursue the offender(s). I still get them from time to time, and just delete them and go my merry way, so to speak. As long as you don't give them the private information they ask for, they can't steal your identity or your money or anything else. Unless I've missed something here, you should be OK just by ignoring them.

Andy

FM/BB:

Did you reply to that phishing message ostensibly from Hotmail? If so, they got you.

I get them from time to time from my ISP. They are ALWAYS phony.

Trust you did NOT use same password for other accounts (banking, etc.); if you did, change those ASAP.

Be safe.

Feral - did the FBI guys refer you to Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) | Home If not, they should have.

Unfortunately there is so much internet fraud going on the only way to address it is through the clearinghouse above. With no actual loss (yet) there's not much anyone can do. Honestly, if the scam originates from Africa there's nothing we can do on this side.

It sucks, but....... well, it just sucks.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

What happened was I DIDNT reply. Then about a week later I had no hotmail and couldnt get into it no how. So the wife thought it must have been a legit message and tried to jump through the hoops to get me back on. Nothing would work up to now, and I am set up with something else. I lost all address,s and messages I had stored. As of this morning my BIL and wife have received that message. I have a hunch probley everyone I know or sent e mail to might get it! This hurts as the only thing I ever had going for me in my life was my honer!

legit mail sites, banking sites or virtually any other site you might legitimately do business with will not send you an email asking for personal info.

They might send an email and ask you to call them. Maybe but that's doubtful, too.

Never and I mean NEVER hit reply and fill out a form. If you are gullible enough to even hit the reply button, look carefully at the address or the URL. Chances are there are a lot of odd characters or symbols in the address.

A legit site will look something like this:

http://(whatever the sites real name is).com (or gov or edu or org)

It will not have RU, NL, #XYZ, or any gibberish string of characters in it.

Send any email with questionable origin or any email from an address you don't recognize directly to the spam bin. If it's important, whomever it is will call you or they will send something to your address via certified mail. If it's really important, they'll knock on your door. If it's bad, really bad, they'll do it at 3:00 in the morning!

Holy ****, this must be one of those Indian/Nigerian schemes. The english used to write the letters is... Bad.

It is possible to create an email server program that can send email as though it is from you.

I have done this for a court that wanted to send automated emails regarding filings. The return email address was set by the program. Many spammers use this method to send thousands of emails at a time. They obtain the email addresses from emails that are not cleaned up before sending.

The following is from an article that I found on cleaning up your emails. I do not know who the original author is.

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickle. How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps. Try the following if you haven't done it before:

(1) When you forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an email to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding email addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own email address. If you don't see your BCC option, click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it.

(3) Remove any "FW:" in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. And clean up the checked by AVG Avast etc on the bottom as well

(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual email you are reading. Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

I just did as sig advised. I hit that lead to the internet crime complaint center and filled out a bunch of stuff. Supposedly they will e-mail me back in a couple hours. I will inform you guys as I am informed. Thanks, Sig. I wonder why the fbi agent didnt give me the lead that you did! (He sounded like a 17 year old kid on the phone).
The thing that I DONT understand is that at first I DIDNT reply at all, then my hot mail stopped as threatened! Then my wife though that message wasnt bogus at all and jumped through the hoops. She had thank God, saved the original request that I showed. This woman takes her keys out of the ignition if she stops at the mail box! She is faaar more security minded than me, and I worked top secret security for 35 years!!
By the way, Lee got me back to feralmerril again! Thanks Lee. I was already starting to develope a split personality!
NOW I just got off the phone with my sister wondering what I was doing in england! I think anybody I ever E-mailed is getting this message! I THINK whoever is behind this now HAS my OLD e-mail and hopeing people that knew me are sending credit card #s etc thinking it is me!

I heard back from the internet crime complaint center lead that sig gave me. They gave me a complaint ID and password for my case #.
The E-mail was generic as you might suppose and telling me what evidence to keep etc if things develope.
Somehow someone now gets my personnel E-mail and I guess uses my contact list to send that begging message to, hopeing that people will e-mail him maybe money by a credit card # or whatever. I know I had probley 3 or 4 of you guys on my contact list!!!

Merril,

Pardon me for giving useless advice in my previous post -I failed to realize at the time that you did indeed ignore the message and then subsequently lost your ability to use your email.

I hope this thing will work out in your favor very soon.

Andy

Snowman, thats okay. But now I just got off the phone with my lady stockbroker. She handels all my 401K and Iras. She also just got a E-mail from me in england begging for money!! Thats 4 so far this morning that got the same message!

That is called "phishing". I must get two dozen similar emails a day.

Don't EVER trust an unsolicited email asking for you to enter password information for email, Facebook, Ebay, etc., or ESPECIALLY bank account information. I must get 100 emails a week from banks at which I don't have accounts, telling me I need to "update my information".

Hint: If you get an email that's suspicious, check to see if you get identical emails from different senders. That's 100% guarantee that the email is bogus. Apparently somebody in Nigeria comes up with a new scam, then shares it with all of his buddies.

I didn't see whether you'd contacted the host of your orriginal email account. They should be able to shut down the old account, although it may be too late to do any good.

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Pete.

A friend had her HOTMAIL account hijacked over a year ago. She was locked out of her own account & never got it back. Apparently the hacker changed her password, her recovery information & the account the confirmation was to be sent to.
The problem is that her many friends did not know her alternate e-mail & she could not get into her addess book.
The problem is spammers, hackers, phishing scams. Having good security programs is the key.
Best Wishes,
Russ

Most all email programs give you some method of exporting or copying your address book. You should do it every so often, just like backing up your other files.
A bit too late for the OP, but something for the future. Those files can be imported back into new accounts or changed providers etc.

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Pete.

I cant get back into my old hotmail account! Nothing works. Somehow they threw me off! Sequence went like this: Dec 24 I got the "fishy" letter. I did nothing. 3 or 4 days ago I was locked out of hotmail. Wife then thought the letter must have been legit, so she supplied that fishy letter with asked for info. Still couldnt get me on. Then she set me up with a different e-mail. Then This morning my old contacts have got the same begging message of me in duress. 5 so far have got ahold of me.

I think I'm missing a little bit. Did you provide a copy of the phish letter to your wife? You must have cause as you said, you were blocked off the old account.
When I suggested you should notify your host about your 'old' account being hijacked. You'd of course have to do that thru your new account. They may also be able to recover your address book from your old account. Whether they give it to you or not is another story.

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Pete.

My wife just tried staighting out the problem useing my computer. She had saved the letter, I dont know whether on my computer or hers. I can find no area of hotmail to complain about what happened. I dont see anywhere on there a place to get to the moderator or whoever. No phone number either.
Basicly my computer really crashed around thanksgiving. Kids all advised me to get a new one. I was too cheap and took mine to a guru here that runs a gameing place. He wiped everything off and set it up again. It worked fine. Now the problems have started. Again, I dont know how, but after getting that letter where I didnt reply, somehow my computer E-mail got locked up as they promised! Thats when the wife tried by answering the E-mail. She couldnt get me back on. Set up the new one. That was about 2 or 3 days ago.

didn't you spell it ferralmeril before???

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Forum consigliere

An author I know has had similar problems, as has a Spanish member of a message board.

The writer e-mailed her readers about the scam yesterday, and because I was on her contact list, I did get one of the bogus letters that she warned about.

Because I was on the contact list of this author and of the member of a message board, I'm in dread that someone
now has my name and may misuse it.

Somehow, responsible governments have got to work together and stop this activity. It has reached epidemic levels.

T-Star

See if this site give you anything useful.
Windows Live Help

This thread seems like something you might want to read.
http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions...en-stolen.aspx

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Pete.

PDL, thanks. I will peruse that stuff later, this has been a headacke, and I just came down with my wifes cold! My head is spinning. Thanks!!

I don't quite understand how the email account was hijacked or why it would be cut off if he didn't respond to the phishing email????

Myron

In many cases, these are easily determined to be what they are by the poor english used in the e-mail.

I dont understand that at all either, myron. As for the poor english, if you have read many of my posts, you might understand THAT end!
Well so far 9 people have got ahold of me today. (None offered to send money, but wondered what I got myself into!)

Feral - your posts are not nearly as bad as the grammar in the typical phishing emails. They are usually quite easy to spot.

So far, I have been lucky, knock on wood, (beats on head), never been a victim of that kind of scam, but some scum once hijacked my dialer and I got a long distance phone bill for calls that the computer made to some unheard of islands somewhere. My long distance company let me off on that one, and I learned to watch for signs that I had been disconnected from my regular ISP and the computer was dialing somewhere else.

Myron

There's also an email going about telling you you need to update your facebook account.... delete that one, too. It's phony.

Feral, thanks for posting this information. It appears to me that the "phishers" were bit more proactive than in most cases, and that we should all learn from it. It seems that they somehow manipulated your e-mail provider to temporarily suspend your Hotmail account (probably through a bit of impersonation and meddling), which then provoked an action from your end to provide them with the information that was necessary for them to completely take over your e-mail account. The ensuing chaos being the end result (so far). I can't offer any better advise than what's already been given; just wanted to offer some sympathy and appreciation for your notifying us. Good luck; hope that you can recover from this attempted embarrassment (...I doubt that any long-time members here would have believed it) and also that somewhere down the line that you get to meet-up with the creep or creeps that initiated this scam. -S2