Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   It was my turn tonight. I keep hearing of people who get their yahoo account compromised and emails sent out using their contact list. It finally happened to me and some of the outgoing messages were NOT in my contact list, just some email addresses from emails I have not deleted.

   If anybody got any emails from me (yahoo address around 7:19 PM EDT) approximately, please don't be mad at me. It wasn't me. According to yahoo, about the only thing you can do is change your password (which I did) and Yahoo says it's "very strong" now.

   I'm sorry to have inconvenienced anybody but why is Yahoo the one that seems to be the favorite for this type of activity?

   The funny part is I caught it myself -- one of my own email address got one of them and that tipped me off -- about 45 minutes after the attack!

   Posted 10 years ago #
2. 

   Lester (Chip)
   English Mod

   I don't know why they do it but it makes me angry too. My yahoo email was hacked only a few weeks ago. It luckily locked my account due to suspicious activity but only after the hacker emailed spam to my contacts. I checked the log on history and it showed they were from Taiwan and I'm from the U.S. It sucks but I guess yahoo must be easier for them to get into, that's my only guess.

   Posted 10 years ago #
3. 

   goodgotd
   Member

   I just got 3 copies of a pretty obvious example of an email that's from a compromised account, and let them know about the problem...

   Posted 10 years ago #
4. 

   Littlemaggit
   Member

   A similar thing has happened three times to me in the last few days - in all three I was the recipient rather than my account being hacked. In one case it was a "ymail" account that was the supposed sender, but in the other two it came via a website where it generates an automatic email if you want to send mail to someone. Sorry - not explaining it very clearly, but it's a website of a small organisation where instead of people's actual emails being shown they are instead for example Secretary@xxx.xxx where the x's stand for the website name. I'm surprised that something as presumably obscure as this should have been hacked into: the only thing I wonder is that it's an organisation to do with the church and so maybe we're seen as soft targets!!

   What really does intrigue me is that one of these emails didn't have any links or attachments - just the nonsense about someone being stranded without their passport or money in a remote country. How on earth can the hackers expect to make anything out of that when there isn't any request to send any money anywhere?

   Also, is there a way of seeing the actual code of the email? I'm using Win 7 and Outlook 2003, but can't find a way of looking behind the words to see whether there is a hidden bit of code that would have a link or something that isn't obvious on the surface.

   Posted 10 years ago #
5. 

   goodgotd
   Member

   How on earth can the hackers expect to make anything

   well, the yahoo compromised account email has a link- well scrambled- and too bloody many people *will* click on it... and enough of them will get tagged by the page's malware to make the [small] effort worth it.

   Also, is there a way of seeing the actual code of the email?

   HTML attachments use 'save as' and specify a .txt extension, then open with a text editor AS plain text.

   read the help to find out how you see all the email's headers, not just from: to:, and subject:.

   for stuff in the body, find 'save as' for the message itself, and open as plain text.

   have fun- bob

   Posted 10 years ago #

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