GMail Account Hacked! Spammed! Take Precautions.

Posted on July 5, 2008
Filed Under Blogging and the Internet, Information | Viewed 583 times

Early this morning, I got a desperate email from Barbara (Tweetums) Gonzalez, with the subject: Subject: PLEASE I NEED YOUR HELP, which reads this way:

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 470 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management, I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $470 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $1100 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i need your help.i have decided not tell my family so that they will not be worried.when I return I will tell them and they will understand.

I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 1.30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home.You need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union .Pls reply back to my alternate email address at secondwind.barbara@yahoo.com because Gmail service is very bad here in Africa, so i can give you the payment details Hope to hear from you soon. Regards.

There must be something here, I thought, so I sent back an email to both GMail and Yahoo, saying: “am truly sorry for what has happened. more so, am truly sorry because my current financial condition does not allow me to help you. i also have been through a lot lately with tuition fees and all. i just have enough to keep me going through each day.”

And I got another email, with the subject: PLEASE, any thing you have

Hi Racoma,

please can you help me with any amount you have, because i am dying here. please try and understand my stituation here.let me know so i can give you the payment details on how to send it,i have to pay up my bills before going to the embassy.please i really need your favour.
.

I called up Barbara later in the morning to warn her about this. Indeed, she has gotten a text message from a friend saying the same. My guess is that the hacker/spammer has sent everyone in her mail list the same message. What’s worse is that the mails sent to her GMail address have all been bouncing back. Chances are also, she has lost her GMail account and all her contacts there. One friend has emailed now, asking about this, like, “HI everyone! did any of you get a letter from Tweetums regarding Africa? Can anyone verify if this is true? How can we make sure it gets to her if ever it is true?” I just hope no one is scammed!

Secure and Hack-Proof Your Password

About.com gives some examples, like
. – Pick a sentence you can remember easily.
. – Combine word segments to form a new string.
. – Capitalize two or more characters where it makes sense.
. – Introduce two or more numbers, dots, ampersands or other special characters.
. – Include a character or two derived from the email system for which the password is used.
.

Examples are provided:

– Momotaro went walking toward the sea
. – morowewalintodse
. – moroWeWalintodSe
. – moro%WeWa1in2dSe
. – moro%OOWeWa1in2dSe
.

Oh, this makes me crazy! How can I memorize a combination of meaningless letters, symbols and numbers?

Save your contact addresses and emails in a soft file, and if you want, a hard copy.

But I guess, it’s worth it. The hacker/spammer might think I am a very influential person worth hacking and spamming. And I would not like to lose my GMail account.

So, BEWARE! Take precautions. At least, secure your password!

Happy weekend everyone!

Comments

20 Responses to “GMail Account Hacked! Spammed! Take Precautions.”

noemi on July 5th, 2008 10:03 am

Scammers are desperate. Dear Racoma pa! Oh dear . not even Dear Dine. What a scammer.
lady cess on July 5th, 2008 10:18 am

i have a friend who was in dubai. then we got an email “from her” that she was supposedly in nigeria (too!) and has no money. (bakit kaya puro nigeria?)

thankfully, another friend called her up right after receiving this email and found out that this wasn’t true at all. so our friend immediately sent emails (after creating a new email account) to all of us to inform that she was not at all in nigeria and did not ask for money.
Kyels on July 5th, 2008 12:21 pm

Musta?

Yes, I do get that kind of e-mail once in a while and it gets annoying at one point. Usually, I put them under spam but they just keep coming, di ba?

=.=

Happy w-end Tita!
francesca on July 5th, 2008 11:09 pm

I got twenty everyday at yahoo mailbox. I didnt bother to open or click, I just spam control them all immediately.
Thanks for te info, dine
glenville on July 6th, 2008 11:37 am

me too. whenever i get suspicious emails, i just immediately mark them as spam. although in your case, that was clearly difficult to identify because it came from a friend. my huband’s friend’s friendster account got hacked once. the hacker sent a message to all of the hacked account’s friends that he’s finally coming out and announced that he’s gay (which isn’t true, of course). that really shocked the living daylight out of his friends. henyhoo, this is a funny example but i hear that the nigeria scam has duped a lot of people already. like what you did, we should all report spammers and scammers every chance we get to help keep other people from getting scammed.
Mitch on July 6th, 2008 4:25 pm

That is why I maintain 2 different email accounts, iba yung pang-sign up sa mga forum and other social networks, iba din yung pang-personal. And I always export my contacts to my computer.

Thanks for the warning po…
analyse on July 6th, 2008 4:58 pm

a lot of spam emails are roaming around the net. i just ignore them. i dont even open.
dimaks on July 6th, 2008 5:44 pm

Ahh, i remember the lotto winner thing and also the business propositions all coming from Nigeria, Africa, etc.

just be cautious at all times.
sassy mom on July 6th, 2008 6:57 pm

Hi, Dine!

Thanks for sharing this. At least, most of the people you know will be warned. They sound so desperate talaga.
ann on July 7th, 2008 1:11 pm

Ganyan din na resib ko from a friend’s gmail address. Kausap ko lang kaya sya nung umaga kaya alam ko na spam yun.
Toe on July 7th, 2008 4:31 pm

I got exactly the same email. I thought it was a request for assistance related to my work. I actually replied to that saying that the person should contact the Philippine Embassy in Nigeria.
edelweiza on July 8th, 2008 8:45 am

bad spammers, tsk..tsk..

I used to receive that kind of mail also, but in my Yahoomail. Now it’s happening to Gmail…not a good sign.
little light on July 8th, 2008 1:13 pm

this happened to two people i know, too. one was a prominent journalist, and nigeria din ang place. what’s with nigeria.
raqgold on July 9th, 2008 2:29 am

tsk tsk, they are all over. i also heard about the scams and spammers working on YMs naman. so better watch out din kung yung kausap nyo nga sa YM e yung kaibigan nyo at baka na spam na rin yung YM ID nung mga kakilala ninyo.
alan jr on July 9th, 2008 6:07 pm

Good thing my password is

**********************
That is 2 passwords combined
Upper case lower case symbols and numbers.
jean on July 9th, 2008 11:46 pm

dami scam and spam mails nowadays…tsk…tsk…
ner on July 10th, 2008 12:09 pm

hay naku, nigeria is becoming known for scamming and spamming.
Rommel on July 11th, 2008 11:52 pm

Wow. bagong modus ah. Err.
michy on July 22nd, 2008 9:09 am

I think this is similar to the email spamming that Oprah mentioned in one of her shows. bad, bad people.
Tony Joaquin on July 23rd, 2008 8:27 pm

when I read your report on Tweetum’s “alarming message in Africa” which I suspected was a hoax and spam.
I hope Twee is fine..and so are you Dine.

Many thanks again and keep flying high with D spot!