My email has been hacked

[VICTORIA]

Can anyone help My daughter just contacted me to say my email has been hacked by someone in Singapore asking for money using my email address showing my full name. What can I do ?? perhaps change my password on AOL ??
Any help appreciated.

[Mike in Cumbria]

Can anyone help My daughter just contacted me to say my email has been hacked by someone in Singapore asking for money using my email address showing my full name. What can I do ?? perhaps change my password on AOL ??
Any help appreciated.

Changing your password is always a good idea.  These type of emails are usually automated in some way - no doubt a few of your friends will receive the same message but I wouldn't worry too much about it. I don't think it means that a hacker can actually get into your email.

[jakpeter]

I had a similar thing with an AOL email account a few years back the have not hacked your e mail the have got hold of your address book and they will send e mails to people you have sent emails to from that account best thing is to get a new e mail account but not AOL one

[VICTORIA]

Thank You

[Billyblue]

You could also email all your contacts to tell them not to open any links in the spurious emails asking for money.  I had to do this one time 

Dawn M

[VICTORIA]

Thank you. All my email contacts have vanished from address book.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Hello I'm sorry to hear about your problems. My first question is are you sure that it was your daughter who told you this?  Or did your daughter actually get a copy of this email? There is a very well known Internet scam whereby people send an email claiming to be from a family or friend delayed or short of money somewhere in the world. If you are not sure that it is from the real person, just ask them a detailed questions to which only that person would know the answer. There are many ways that people could have got your email address, quite legitimately. Your email address will be on the computers of many people to whom you have sent messages. If just one of those computers had suffered a security breach, then your email address could have fallen into the hands of people using it mischievously full stop

With regards to your email addresses disappearing, this may or may not be an unrelated activity. Firstly are you sure that you are looking in the right place, and that you haven't reconfigured your mail program in some way? I assume from your tone that you did not have a backup of your address book. Having worked in IT for 40 years I have told so many people "how do you backup your address book" only to get a blank look. I have almost launched my career on people not backing up their address books. Many times, while Consulting a senior manager or training a senior manager I have casually said "what method do you use for backing up your address book" only to get a look of bewilderment. You only have to do that a few dozen times in a year and somebody will pass on good things about you to your manager!

I doubt that there is an email program in use that does not have an option to export your address book. It takes a few seconds and you should do it whenever you have made many updates to your address book. If at anytime you need to use your backup there will also be an option to import an address book. I know none of this is going to console you, but I just hope that by writing this, I'm helping somebody avoid your problems in the future.

martin

[starcat]

Victoria, This happened to me quite a few years ago, my gmail was hacked & an email was sent to everyone on my contact list saying I was in Scotland for family history, I had been robbed at gunpoint & to send money via a Western union account, all of my contacts had then been deleted, luckily one of the first people to receive the email was my daughter, I changed my password for the gmail account but it was realy weird any email I tried to send went straight into trash & any email I received went straight into sent mail box, i shut down the account  & opened a new one with aol but even today i keep very few email addresse's in the address book, just family incase anything similar ever happens again, I also contacted Western union  to make certain there was not an account opened im my name but they never replied, a lot of the deleted emails were contacts I only knew through family history & some of them I still had their address as id printed out some emails, I contacted them to explain it was a scam but a few would never reply & havent contacted me since, I suspect they were taken in by the scam & sent money.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Starcat, good advice.  One problem is that if anyone does get duped, they often keep it quiet.  And if you do warn someone, they often think THAT THAT is part of the scam.

Martin