Our email account [email protected] was hacked into this morning and someone used our email addy to send an email asking for money to our entire email listing. If you have receive this, it is NOT from us. Yahoo has locked down our account for the next 24 hours due to the security breach so we are unable to retrieve our email listing to warn everyone. If you’re a Bantus member and reading this, please spread the word.
If you’ve got any ideas to prevent future break-ins or post-op recovery, let me know. Thanks!
note: btw, the hacker will entertain your replies coz he went through our inbox and knows personal stuff about people on our email list so he is damn convincing. this is the latest feedback from a friend who called us from Germany to verify with us.
Perhaps, get a new e-mail address as a first step. Include in the password, 1 special character (ie: !@#$%), 1 number and 1 capital letter.
Another measure is to ensure that bantus e-mail not be used for registration at “random/strange sites”.
Make sure your anti-virus is up to date and that a full system scan was conducted. Any other measures would be on server side and nothing much we can do about it.
To recover from this, as soon as Yahoo releases the account, inform everyone on the list about what has happened. Especially clients.
Great advice from Jemuel.
I 2nd his advice.
The first and most important step is to make sure your computer, and the way you use it, is safe and secure. That will prevent you from getting hacked, and spreading viruses and scams onto your friends, family, and acquaintances.
If you do receive a suspicious email, anything that seems too good to be true, someone asking for help or money, or asking you to spread the email onto others…
1) 5 seconds on Google or Wikipedia will probably reveal the truth about your email. It’s either a scam, or waste of time.
2) Google it before clicking on any links.
3) Google it before replying to the sender.
4) Google it before forwarding it onto your friends.
Unfortunately, there are many clever scammers out there.
Be a capoeirista; always keep your guard up, be street wise, know how to play the game!
more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_scam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scam_baiting