Category: Geeks r Us
Today, my boyfriend Spiros told me something truly disturbing. As a bit of background, he has two e-mail addresses, both with Yahoo. The first is for work. The second is for casual chat etc. Well, he got an e-mail to his casual address with the subject "Spiros, are you drowning in debt?" Of course, he didn't open it and now doesn't remember who sent it, since he deleted it. Here's the thing. He doesn't use his real name in that address,. He's also not an avid net user and never signed up to anything with it except Facebook, where, again, he used a different name, the one associated with that e-mail. So how did the person know that his name is Spiros? We've come up with a few answers and none of them are comforting. Very few people have that particular address. I'm pretty much the only one who even writes to it. We think that someone might have hacked into his computer somehow and read the messages that were sent to him, saying things like Hi Spiro etc. That, or someone hacked into my computer and saw the messages that we sent one another. I have two gmail addresses myself, and while the one from which I normally send wouldn't really cause a problem, my other one has personal information and is used mainly for bills etc. and I certainly wouldn't want a hacker knowing what's in there. It also just occured to me that, maybe, someone didn't see the messages but only saw one of our address books and picked his address at random, saw the name in the address book and used it. Either way, it means that someone's got our information! He did have a virus, a trojan/worm (maybe both not sure) that AVG detected and deleted, but maybe, it got to his stuff before we were able to install the antivirus program.
All I know is that both of us are really scared and are taking precautionary measures. This is making me physically ill and it takes alot to do that. What if someone not only got into our e-mails but into our computers? I have important things in mine that are for me alone to know, things that could lead to identity theft if in the wrong hands. I've been using computers for 14 years and have never seen anything like this, and he's always been paranoied about such things, since he uses them only for basic tasks. If anyone has an idea of what happened or could help us in any way, please let me know either here or on my messengers. Also, should he delete the casual address and how do I change my passwords on my GMail accounts? Come to think of it, with XP Pro, how do I make certain folders password protected and can this be done on compact flash cards as well or only within the actual hard disk?
Oh yeah. How do you delete e-mail addresses and change passwords on Yahoo accounts? It just occured to me that he wants to do this and I'm sure he won't know how if it's one of those things that takes forever to find.
um, you are over reacting, there is no such thing as directly hacking in to computers, so much anymore. if you are both sitting bhind routers what most likely happened is that an automated program pieced information together and just as you said got his name in relation to his email in your or his own address book. nothing to freak out about.
I sincerely pray that you're right, and for once, I wouldn't even mind accepting the criticism. This has really upset me and I know it scared him. I know that he's using a wireless connection but have no idea whether or not he's behind a router. Still, I do know that it's a secure connection so that helps. I suppose that I should find out if other people got a similar e-mail. Certainly, it sounded like spam but the fact that it used his name on an address that doesn't have it was what got both of us. Glad to know that there are such stupid programs out there that aren't really harmful but that send out junk. Hopefully, that's all this will turn out to be. And are you really serious that people can't hack into computers? I always thought they could.
To go off a bit on what BlindTechsNet had said,
Hackers will target you for very specific reasons. Hackers will rather target banks, credcars companies, etc where they can get money or numbers to buy stuff. I do agree with BlindTechsNet, it was most likely spam. Changing a yahoo password is findable on yahoo's site, but you need an XP or Win 7 machine with Internet Explorer.
Firefox though it works on most sites, yahoo isn't one of them that it works well with. At least with screen readers. So though some of your point are indeed valid, you're taking the possible case of spam too seriously. The thing I'd advise you do is get a cred report for you and your bf from the 3 main credit issuers every 3-6 months and keep checking to make sure that nothing that you didn't want or order appears on it.
Same for your creditcards or bank/ATM cards. Keep a running tally of what you use, how much you spend, and look out for any charges that you're sure aren't yours. If there are charges you can have the card companies give you your money back if it is a creditcard, unsure if this applies to debet cards or not. I'll check on it and give you links to info on this to backup what I've said above.
Thanks for your added reassurance. It really does help. Spiros is fully sighted so doesn't need a screenreader. But he's still learning English and I thought that some of the technical wording might confuse him. Still, if it's as easy as going to settings or something then it shouldn't be a problem. He, like me, is using XP but he also likes Firefox. Does anyone else know if this is a screenreader issue or if Yahoo is just not compatible with Firefox when it comes to changing passwords? I went to GMail to try and change my password but couldn't find any link to do so. I use the basic layout. Do I need to change to html for the change password link/option to appear? Will changing the password on my GMail account cause me trouble when trying to sign into Youtube, since I used GMail to sign up?
Spiros doesn't shop online but I do, and I always make sure to check both my budget and the monthly reports of how my card is being used to insure that no unauthorised purchases have been made. I've had people try to use my information in the past and it definitely wasn't a pleasant experience. But they were caught and apprehended. Thanks, though, for that very important advice. Overall, I feel alot better and will definitely pass this information onto Spiros as I'm sure it will do the same for him.
Well, the yahoo site is crap accessibility-wise now. You can try the mobile yahoo site, m.yahoo.com, but since I haven't used it much I don't know if you can change your password there or not. but my suggestion is that he switches to gmail anyway because it's more secure. When I had a yahoo account, I got lots of spam in my inbox, but gmail catches that kind of thing much more often. As for changing your gmail password, go into settings, then accounts, and at the bottom of that list of settings you should see something that says google account settings. You should be able to change your password in there.
Thanks a million. I told him about GMail this morning and how I love it and think I got him hooked on the idea of making a new account with them. I must agree with you that it's very secure, in general, and the fact that you get tons of room only makes it even better, since you don't have to keep deleting messages. Just to be fair, though, he said that most of his spam (probably this one too) goes to his spam folder.
Yeah, I totally recommend gmail...the best around. I often look in my spam folder and I get some people trying to hoax me if I didn't have gmail, but they never use my name, so...I'm not really sure of how his name got in that. So anyways, just go with gmail and I'm sure all of the fears and such would go away.
I concur it was a script using data from multiple sources but getting someone's name is considerably easier than getting their credit card. And, FWIW, I've seen scripts get it wrong. A few years ago I got a hoax follow-up email from an alleged woman (probably a 400-pound guy in a jeep getting his laughs) which had my name and city correct, but we couldn't have met at the coffee shop on the date the script randomly picked because I was out of town and my wife knew it. She's a perpetual neophyte technically, so I came out and just showed it to her and explained it all. Had she found it first, not having added two and two (with the business trip), well you could figure out the rest. I'm a bit of a straight shooter so am more likely to just show it to her explain what it is and be done with it. Though it didn't mean too much to her, I found the source to the script - as petty as it was - and showed it to her.
It was probably a dude, fifty plus, the kind that has nudies of Dr. Laura and shows everyone pictures of himself with girls when riding an airplane.
hahaha I bet he had no clue that he was writing to a 65-year-old man. That reminds me of the time when Grandma, who was about 78 or so at the time, received a text from this guy talking about how hot he was and how he'd love to meet her. Grandma doesn't even know how to text nor is she interested in anyone. You could imagine that we all had a huge laugh, including her. But the subject of this e-mail was debt, so this guy probably wasn't trying to attract anyone for anything except maybe their wallet. Thanks for making me smile... That felt good.
I'd agree with Gmail also, but I've never really gotten any spam in my yahoo account or my gmail, it mostly comes to my aim one
I don't get spam with Yahoo at all, so am not sure where that's coming from.
Well when I had yahoo it was a few years ago, so maybe they've improved security since then, but regardless, Gmail is still better.