BLACKMAIL

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Today have recieved some very strange E mails.

Someone has hacked into my E mails.

One threatens to publish that I have been viewing porn videios, unless payment of $600 is made.

Consequently have had to spend a lot of time upgrading security and changing passwords.

If you see anything of this nature, please ignore it and delete, if possible, lest they hack into you!

Howard

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Probably mere coincidence, but I was in Morrison’s supermarket today when their entire check-out system failed … cue much scurrying-about by Management.

We were assured that the Internet had gone-down, but I did en-passant mention the Russians.

MichaelG.

[mike TParticipant @miket56243]

Ha ha. So, the Russians tracked you down to your local Morrison’s supermarket and took out the entire check out system.

Impressive…. but don’t get paranoid about it, it may have been a mere coincidence.

 

Mike

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

🙂

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Howard I dont think anybody has ‘hacked into your emails’, more likely that you have just received an email.

In the past I have been a recipient of that type of email (several over a two year period) and whilst having nothing to hide I was initially concerned because the sender was so persistent, ‘he’ said had secretly recorded image and video files of me despite the fact that my PC has no camera.

I think this type of ransomware email are sent out in bulk by web-bots to any email address they can scavenge whilst trawling the web.

Best just to delete.

Ian P

 

 

[Howard Lewis]

On 21 November 2024 at 19:22 Howard Lewis Said:

…

Someone has hacked into my E mails.

…

Consequently have had to spend a lot of time upgrading security and changing passwords.

…

Don’t worry too much, it’s unlikely the email system or your good self have been hacked in the sense of this being an actual security breach.  Probably isn’t a crook inside Howard’s computer, busy mining his web/email history, bank & personal details.

More likely some ne’er do well has got hold of Howard’s email address and is simply posting accusations on the off chance he has a guilty conscience and will pay up without thinking.

Harvesting and selling valid email addresses for criminal and legitimate purposes is big business. Happened to me ten years ago because a friend of a friend enjoyed exploring porn and off-colour websites.  These websites allow users to forward jokes to their mates by email,  the booby trap being that the email is blind copied to the bad guys, who collected all the email addresses.  Text added by the baddies to the email invited recipients to forward the email to their friends, an electronic pyramid scheme.

So my friend blew my cover by sending me one of these nasties and soon after I got several blackmail attempts.  Knowing how, I was able to identify the source as Hanoi, and that the leak was my friend, who couldn’t understand he’d caused a problem – “Just a bit of fun Dave”. Had to close my email account and open another…

No harm in keeping security up-to-date and changing passwords.

Dave

[FulmenParticipant @fulmen]

My advice is to use unique machine generated passwords for all sites and a good password manager like Bitwarden.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Thanks for the help.

The low life DID hack in, somehow, as I found “Any Desk” in DOWNLOADS.

This is one of the favourites for scammers, according to BBC Scam Interceptors.

Needless to say, it is no longer in place. Deleted and then deleted from the Recycle bin. So no more demands, remote acess, or operation!

Have spent HOURS buying different security, and changing passwords. So much so, that despite having noted the passwords, I now have difficulty getting in.  Seems to need a password for every change of page!

Hopefully this will be the last that will be heard of it, and no attempts will be made blacken my name!

Just goes to show how careful we have to be!

Certainly wasn’t going to pay up, since this would have been an admission of guilt, and probably produced further demands.

Ar least, my address book has been pruned, as part of the checks, which might speed things up a bit!

Howard

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