Online safety - beware the phishers

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Xaccers
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Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by Xaccers »

I've just spent the past 90 minutes recovering someone's Yahoo account.
She's off on maternity leave with a very unwell premature baby, so has other things on her mind. She received an email claiming to be from Yahoo stating that she was over her mail quota and if she wanted to keep her account she should follow the link in the email and log in. Which she did, thereby giving the phishers access to her account.
Not long after, one of the guys in finance received an email from her yahoo account claiming she had been mugged and needed to be sent some money.
Being a switched on chap he replied "To confirm it's you, who do I sit next to in work?" and got nothing back.

Sounds like a simple phish and phish again technique doesn't it? Surely no real harm can be done unless people are stupid enough to send money without asking questions.
Except...
She only went and kept all her mortgage, rent, bank details etc in her Yahoo account!

Also, her work colleagues tried to be helpful and get the phone number for Yahoo to report it, except they too went to a phishing site so when she called the number she was told she'd have to hand over £60

The phishers set up a live.com (hotmail) account and configured her Yahoo account to forward all emails on to there.
They cleared out all her emails and contacts so I've requested Yahoo restore them, which they don't charge for.

One good thing I see Yahoo have copied from Google is the secondary security that can be activated. Basically you add a mobile number to your account and whenever someone tries to log in a code is sent via SMS which is needed to authenticate.
So if you have a Google or Yahoo account, it would be a good idea to activate this feature.
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by citronut »

Mr C Salter of G fame has just the other day had an email claiming to be the police, saying he had to pay £100 pound or his computer would be locked,
his computer did get locked,
he phoned the police to check it out and they said its a scam do not pay any money
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by red_dwarfers »

It's interesting that there seems to be a much higher percentage of Yahoo accounts having phishing/hacking problems the last year. A few other computery fixy friends have noticed it too.

Chris had the Metropolitan Police Virus. Locked him out of normal boot and safe mode.
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Post by addo »

Good to hear the input of some professional cynics on this aspect of secondary verification. It's changed my outlook.

I hope the baby gets better, too.
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by myglaren »

I have a couple of Yahoo accounts.
The primary one was hijacked last year by a French spammer but quickly reclaimed.
I get the odd fishing email but they are generally so blatant they are comical.
I haven't gone for secondary verification as it seems a lot of bother. The only one I have that for is the bank.
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by Xaccers »

I always have my mobile with me so its no bother.
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by myglaren »

I often don't have mine with me and it is rarely switched on if I do. Hate phones.

There was an attack on the Ubuntu Forums last week, now resolved.
Had the side effect that all my passwords had to be changed.

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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by CitroJim »

red_dwarfers wrote: Chris had the Metropolitan Police Virus.
There's a joke lurking inside there somewhere but sadly I can't think of one at the moment...
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Re: Online safety - beware the phishers

Post by CitroJim »

I still fail utterly and totally to understand the mentality of these spammers...

I guess they're the result of the head injury sustained by diving into the shallow end of the gene pool...

The spammers who try it on on this site seem to have an IQ barely into double digits...
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