Let's be careful out there --

Yesterday I received an email from a friend (well, from his account) with an urgent message telling about his being mugged in while in the Ukraine. Naturally, he's OK but his money and cell phone are gone (the thieves let him keep his passport too). The problem is the evil hotel manager won't let him leave until his bill is paid.

I recognized this as a scam as soon as I read the first sentence, but it is very frightening that his personal email account had been hacked. (I went to his FB page and posted about this - within five minutes two others responded that they'd gotten the same message). We all know to be wary of unknown messengers, but this forces a whole new level of concern.

Ride, Moley, ride!

• RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,kingfish, 01:30 PM, 02-26-14
• RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,Estee, 01:30 PM, 02-26-14
• RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,kidflash212, 04:35 PM, 02-26-14
  • RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,kingfish, 05:49 PM, 02-26-14
  • RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,PepeLePew13, 06:25 PM, 02-26-14
    • RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,kidflash212, 10:13 AM, 02-28-14
      • RE: Ukraine is the new Nigeria,kingfish, 11:05 AM, 02-28-14

Yeah, I've also received similar emails purportedly from the accounts of people I know, including relatives. They aren't hard to spot, usually the friend's name leads the return address, but the rest of the address is foreign. I don't know if this was the case with you or not, though.

Apparently they get a virus or a bot or something from opening a bogus email that allows them to send those scam emails to everyone in their victim's address book.

When I receive them I alert the people I know that their email account has been hacked and that their address book is being used to scam all their friends. I haven't seen a common denominator as far as email systems, but I suspect they (the friends) are using the free easily available systems, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.

Anyway, it becomes more important every day to be suspicious of everything you receive, and make sure that the address attached to received emails is the legitimate address of the person in the address line.

Begs the question of what kind of stupid thief would leave someone with a valid US passport. Those things are gold.

I've been the guy whose email was hacked. My elderly aunt called me one day asking why I was sending email encouraging her to buy crap from some Chinese company.

Worst part is how hard it is to put a stop to.

Tribe!

Have you managed to stop it? If so what did you have to do?

How would one stop it?

Good question, Kingfish, gold star for you. (Thank me, thank me).

If the bot just sent your address book file to another machine, you're screwed. It's out of your hands. All your friends can do is block your bogus address.

If the bot generates the scam messages on your computer and sends them using your connection during down times, a good security program should be able to find and erase it. In the meantime, if you have DSL and/or wireless, I think you ought to be able to kill the connection to the cable modem or the router or whatever and prevent the downtime messages from being sent.

But like most all computer infections, they are a pain to get out and are so aggravating.

The easiest way to stop this is to change your password pronto once you're aware of this hack. These bots send out spam messages based on the old password they figured how to hack into, so as long as that password is the same, the messages keep going out.

Changing my password helped and I basically deleted my entire address book so there were no email addresses for them to use. They had also set my email to send an automatic response to anyone who emailed me (sort of the way you set your email at work to let people know you are out of the office only sending an ad instead) which I disabled.

All of these hacks came from China. I say we blast them.

Deleting the address book is about the best solution I can see. Plus being more vigilant about opening suspicious emails, but they can be clever about those things so we are all vulnerable.

If the bot or whatever came in via an email, it was already past your password protection, it didn't need to get your PW because you let it in when you signed in. It's short trip from your inbox to your address book.

Blast them? I'm thinking more along the lines of flaying them alive and letting Tse fly larve spend a couple of weeks eating their flesh. But that's just me.

Crabman