Sunday Was A Write Off
At 8.56 Sunday morning someone allegedly in India using Yahoo Mobile accessed my account and sent out god knows how many Spam emails to everyone in my address book. Luckily I woke up about 40 minutes later and logged on to see an inbox full of returned email and friends alerting me to the fact that something was amiss.
I quickly did what I knew I had to do. I went in and changed my password and I deleted my whole contacts list (just in case it was a nasty in the machine) and went ahead to try and get some answers.
My mind was put to rest a little that my machine was clean, my Anti Virus had run over night and nothing was flashing up with Spybot. Also looking at the emails that were return undelivered I noticed that the emails sent had my full name listed in the FROM column. This could only have been done from the web account as my Desktop mail client only has my first name listed.
from there on out my day was taken up with transferring all of the business that was dealt with by that Yahoo account (Groups, Flickr and Messenger) over to a totally new account. I am hoping that I managed to remember everything before I terminated the account. I am pretty gutted at losing that account. I had had it longer than I have been married. I used it absolutely EVERY day. Now I just have another Gmail account to add to the list seeing as Yahoo no longer offer POP service to non premium users.
Throughout the day, whilst trying to sort everything else I was fielding emails from friends informing me there was a problem and even a few abusive emails. You’d be surprised at how little some people know when they think they have the moral high ground. For the first time in a long time, I was actually upset by an email. OK I have had shitty emails in the past, but this one guy really went to town belittling me for something that was totally out of my hands. Oh well, I moved on secure in the knowledge that I have done everything in my power to make sure my PC and the Computers of my online friends are as safe as they can be when dealing with me. I can only do so much and I can only do it so fast. It’s now 02.40 Monday morning and I have been at it since a little after 9am Sunday… so screw it I am going to bed.
Until Next Time…
Your Host
2 Comments
I know how you feel. Last month my Hotmail account was hacked for the first time ever and a whole truckload of spam went out from my address.
It’s my own fault I guess — I’ve been using the same password ever since Hotmail first started.
Thanks for the comment Mike. I have no idea why someone would want to do something like this. It has no rhyme or reason behind it. I guess the lure of an extra few pennies for spamming the 30 or so people in my contact book was worth it to them.