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Email Scam

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Email Scam

Postby Paz_Pazzaz » Thu Oct 04, 2018 12:59 am

I haven't opened my email account for a while but tonight I found two versions of the following message. I did not open the message, I don't think... I read (and copied it) via Thunderbird>View>Message Source.

"Hello!
I'm a member of an international hacker group.

As you could probably have guessed, your account patriceb@patriceart.com was hacked, because I sent message you from it.

Now I have access to you accounts!
For example, your password for patriceb@patriceart.com is ________________________

Within a period from July 7, 2018 to September 23, 2018, you were infected by the virus we've created, through an adult website you've visited.
So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers.
Moreover, we've gotten full damps of these data.

We are aware of your little and big secrets...yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..

But the key thing is that sometimes we recorded you with your webcam, syncing the recordings with what you watched!
I think you are not interested show this video to your friends, relatives, and your intimate one...

Transfer $700 to our Bitcoin wallet: 1Lughwk11SAsz54wZJ3bpGbNqGfVanMWzk
If you don't know about Bitcoin please input in Google "buy BTC". It's really easy.

I guarantee that after that, we'll erase all your "data" :D

A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.

Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.

You should always think about your security. We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets.
Take care of yourself."


I'm not sure if the pw for my email account is what they said, but the info DID indicate that it was sent from me - to me.
I haven't been to any pron sites and I don't have a webcam or an audio recorder built into my desktop computer, (LG monitor - no camera) so I know they are lying about that. I don't have anything to be blackmailed over, but how the heck did they get into my email account???? and are there any authorities I can forward this to who might be able to catch these guys?

FBI?

I know there are a couple of websites where I use the pw they supplied. One is a place where I buy rights to use music tracks. S'pose I ought to get on over there and change the pws... and try to figure out if it is my email pw.

Anything else I should do?

thanks,

Paz
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Paz_Pazzaz » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:21 am

I've just checked. The pw they used is NOT a pw for any of my email accounts through my webhost.

How could they have gone from having hacked my pw from a regular website and then sent me emails through my own account????
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Re: Email Scam

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:50 am

Recently I have received about a dozen of these - virtually identical wording - some in English, some in Italian and sent from my email address to me. I just delete them.

What I don't understand is why (sometimes) legitimate emails that I send out get 'spamhaused' but this more prolific and insidious junk escapes those types of 'capture nets'. :(
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Bob » Thu Oct 04, 2018 2:22 am

This is a variation of an extortion scam that has been going around. The email headers were most likely spoofed to make it look like it was sent from your email account. That's easy to do. It's very unlikely that it was actually sent from your email account. You most likely weren't hacked either. The email address and password most likely came from your sign up information at one of the web sites that you used which had a data breach. The extortionist probably got the information from one of the dark web databases that collect that information from various sources. Scammers will use that info along with a template and script to send thousands of these emails hoping to find someone who feels guilty enough to fall for it. If you are still using that password in any context, change it all the sites where you use it. Hackers can run a script to try that email and password at banking and other web sites to try to gain access to your accounts.

I use a different strong password at every web site and account that I use and change the passwords regularly. There are password manager applications that can make that job easier.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby sidd finch » Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:39 am

I agree with Bob it is most likely Phishing. I would suggest that you change your password just to be safe. The longer the password the harder it is to crack.

Sidd
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Peru » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:46 pm

Paz_Pazzaz wrote: sent me emails through my own account????


I get a few emails on occasion that show as being sent from my email address in the area that shows the name of the sender, but if I check the real address that it was sent from, it is not my email address.

I just delete them.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Paz_Pazzaz » Fri Oct 05, 2018 5:40 pm

Thanks guys, every one of you. Guess I'll just delete them.

I've been searching, the pw is not on this computer so it must have been from a website I haven't been to in several years. Even so, time for pw changes all around and I will make them contortionists!

I'll look again at the gibberish header info and see if I can be sure they didn't get into my web host's info. If they didn't do that, then it isn't so worrying.

thanks!
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Re: Email Scam

Postby momoffduty » Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:03 am

It is sad the unscrupulous people out there today. My aunt, who is not techie, was scammed with something like this. She fell for the phone scam and her computer locked up. She had to take it in for repairs. The IRS phone scam is a big one too. I told her it was a robo call and it was a scam. She had been out to dinner with a friend and they both had the IRS scam calls on their answering machines at home. My Aunt thinks it was someone from the restaurant and she is never going back there. I could not convince her it was a robo call and that I get many of the same ones and I didn't go to that restaurant. ](*,) There are many vulnerable people ripe for the picking and it makes me ill thinking about the creeps that prey.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby sidd finch » Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:20 am

I am sorry your aunt got scammed. It seems that the more advanced the technology gets the quicker the bad guys want to cause mayhem.

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Re: Email Scam

Postby Peru » Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:36 am

My 95 year old mother-in-law is on the other end of the spectrum. She won't even talk to legitimate phone callers unless it is a relative or friend. And she doesn't even own a computer.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Dave McElderry » Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:19 am

Peru wrote:My 95 year old mother-in-law is on the other end of the spectrum. She won't even talk to legitimate phone callers unless it is a relative or friend. And she doesn't even own a computer.

Seems like a pretty good policy in today's world. I understand that there are going to be occasional legitimate calls from people who don't fit into the relative or friend category, but I'll bet there are far many more that are not legit. She's taking a better safe than sorry attitude.

Just recently we had a good friend, 80 years young, get scammed out of a very significant amount of money. This is a smart woman with a career in business and education who is still quite sharp and sound of mind. She let her guard down momentarily and they roped her in. Anyone who thinks they could never fall for these scammers is ripe for the picking because they're extremely slick. It's what they do all day long and they're very practiced at it.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby TreeTopsRanch » Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:08 am

Dave, can you describe that scam your good friend fell for?
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Dave McElderry » Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:31 am

TreeTopsRanch wrote:Dave, can you describe that scam your good friend fell for?

She said she was on Pinterest and had downloaded a sewing template of some kind. As a sidenote, I've seen many cases of clients making the wrong association of the cause of a computer issue, where they think there was cause and effect but there really wasn't. I can't prove that the template was the actual cause. Sometime shortly thereafter she got a popup on her screen saying that her computer was infected with viruses or malware and that she needed to call "Microsoft support" immediately at the number that they gave. Such an old scam. She said her first reaction was to call me, but then she thought, "I can handle this myself." Once she called the number it all went downhill from there. There was quite a chain of events that they took her through but I don't remember them in detail. She allowed him access to her computer. My forensics later showed that they had removed Malwarebytes Premium and then downloaded and ran 4 or 5 different executables, all of which would undoubtedly been stopped by Malwarebytes under other circumstances. She said that in retrospect she should have known better, but the guy was so convincing and friendly, helpful. He was only looking out for her best interest, or so it seemed. Everything he said seemed to make sense. There was even a point at which they had taken a significant amount of money from an account and then convinced her that it was a "bookkeeping error" and would be corrected.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby TreeTopsRanch » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:14 pm

Yes, that looks like an older scam. I have a friend that fell for a similar scam but she didn't get to the point of loosing any money to the scammers. They did have access to her computer however and it locked up. She had to take it in to Best Buy and get it fixed for $100. She lost most of her programs in the process.
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Re: Email Scam

Postby Peru » Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:23 pm

Yeah, that's the one where you have to open Task Manager and kill the process to get rid of it. I've had that one many times. It's one of the most annoying ones. :pull:
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