Please Read! I have just been computer scammed big time!

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
feralmerril said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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.
 
feralmerril said:
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!
Click to expand...
didn't you spell it ferralmeril before??? :D
 
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
 
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
 
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