Email and the next scam?

Email and the next scam? was Originally Posted on July 31, 2012 by lavarock

Recently 3 neighbors have unknowingly sent out email spam from their accounts; roadrunner, Yahoo and Hotmail. There have been many cases recently where massive numbers of email accounts and passwords have been compromised and it would not hurt you to go change your passwords. If you can come up with a cryptic one you may be able to make it similar on many websites. I would not come up with a common password to use everywhere, but you might be able to make it easy for you to remember yet different on each site.

For example, lets say you create a base password of HIAMIL (which is the first letter of each word in the phrase “Harvey Is A Movie I Love”. That should be cryptic enough but should also contain a number or two. Let’s change the digit “1” for an “I” making it “H1AM1L. Then when you log into Yahoo, perhaps add a “Y” on the end “H1AM1LY” or perhaps before the digit, “HY1AM1L”. To get more creative, perhaps the site name could be Upper case and everything else lower.

You can take your own phrase and use it often, butr make sure it is unique enough.

Also, there are password programs which will remember and/or generate cryptic passwords for sites for you. Some are better and more secure than others.

I have received many bounced-back emails that say they were from my coffee site, but were not. They come in to my defaul email account with cryptic names (supposedly from my company) like [email protected]. When I look at who actually sent the email (from the headers) it is some foreign email server which was not protected. There is nothing I can do to stop it because I have no control over someone impersonating me. However, my emails erver has a list of which IP addresses can legally send out mail and if the receiving server checks that list, they would reject these emails. It just appears they don’t check. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google DO check these sender approvls and will reject email from people not authorized.

Anyway, I also have heard the scam where people get an email or phone call fom someone impersonating a friend or relative, saying they are stuck overseas and have no money. Please wire (or transfer money) and they will pay back quickly. A friends company got one of these phone calls that the employee was stuck in Canada and had been robbed. The problem is they called the persons employee who knows the bosses voice and had just seen him in the office a few hours ago. He could not and would not have been in Canada then.

Scammers also call elderly and say they are a grandson or cousin, etc. They tell some sad tail and the reason they reached out is they are embarased to call some one else. The elderly want to help and don’t realize this is not a real relative.

The reason I mention this is that with so many people at the Olympics, I am exprecting that that type of call will start soon. “Hey, this is xxxx and I am in London with my class for the Olympics. I can’t get hold of my family (generic cus they don’t have actual family info) and I got robbed. The bus will leave without me and I need to get a ticket or I’ll br stranded. If you can quickly wire me some funds, I’ll make sure you get paid back with interest. Also, I’ll bring some nice souveniors for you. I really appreciate it.”

That is the scam I’m waiting to hear being used. Let me know if you hear of any Olympic scams going on.