Someone hacked my e-mai I Guess

[Guest 1930]

Its not me sending these, this is the latest list of recipients .........H.Reding@redinginstruments.com, gdegland@juno.com, r.zetnick@charter.net, theguras@hotmail.com, jhason2@yahoo.com, 1930dodge@gmail.com, DAW1@comcast.net

[Bob Zetnick]

Yeah, I didn't think you knew me well enough to bring up weight loss issues! ...I had to open it though 'cause I was certain it was some new cool thing you leaned about DA 6's!!!

[Guest 1930]

I changed my password to one they will never crack ( ) so hopefully there wont be any more of that. I guess weight loss is a pretty universal issue here in the U.S Bob so I wouldnt feel bad

[1936 D2]

This is a good lesson for us all. You DO NOT want to put your full email address visible on any post in a normal, standard looking format. There are things called "spiders" out there that have the job of searching all open web pages for information. That is how the main search companies (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc) are able to help you find things. They send out "spiders" to crawl around the web , find and remember stuff.

The bad guys use this same technology to search open web pages for stuff like email addresses, phone numbers, names connected to particular data, etc. I'm sure these "bots" scraped these email addresses off some of these web pages and eventually found a way to either use them directly or use them as a "spoofed" sender's address on mail they are sending out. (Then it 'looks" like it came from a trusted sender).

So my suggestion here is to never post a "machine readable" email address or phone number on these open forum posts. And maybe try to restrict the use of "real names" in posts also. Try using things like "jason2 at yah00 * c0m" or maybe "[5S5} one six thr33 _ se^en 6 t00 nin3". Us humans can easily figure this out but the "bot spiders" can't be sure. They can only guess. Notice how the email addresses Jason put in the earlier post automatically end up as a "blue hot link". Yea, it's convenient to just click on it and your machine starts up your email client, but those "blue hot links" are super easy for the "bot spiders" to find also.

Also, NEVER use the same passwords for multiple accounts. If they crack one, they have them all! Passwords that are cracked are put into "dictionary" lists that are used by programs to run through as test sample passwords. With the powerful computers today it would not take too long for a machine to go through the whole "dictionary" of passwords until one works. Then you are up the proverbial creek!

All this is why you never see me use my real name here on the Forum, AND I NEVER post full email addresses or phone numbers.

Good luck to all!

[Guest 1930]

Call me crazy but I am absolutely confident it has alot to do with the web browser we are forced to use now adays, I have up until recently used internet explorer 6. I love it, have had very few issues with any sort of viruses, I have never and still dont ( go ahead make my day ) have any virus protection because I do not have any issues/that cause the issues.

Now that AACA and some other sites are forcing me to upgrade to a newer browser and I have noticed that I am absolutely being spied on, I was searching a few weeks ago for a Baldor electric motor for a compressor I am working on and ever since my search I am now getting advertisements for electric motors pop up on adds ect. This is just one of many examples.

I have never experienced this with Exp 6. THEY say 6 has holes and its no good and blah blah blah. That is a bunch of shiz, THEY want me to use their newer updated browser because THEY want to keep tabs on me that were harder to do with Explorer 6.

I am not personally the least bit concerned with this little mishap and wont be scared to give out my e-mail address or name but I no longer give out my phone # or address on the web, I realize now there are waay to many wack jobs out there.

And I think I know how they got it and it was as I think D-2 was saying in that some time ago I was told my account had been jeapordized or something and I needed to go here or there to sign in and get it fixed.

I dont know any better so I did and now I know to ignore all of these e-mails that I get and not open them or take further action.

Just as an update I was read to turn my comp off now and go to bed when I noticed I got an e-mail that is supposedly from Paypal, I keep getting the same one, ( last couple of weeks) says ............Your Bill Me Later statement is ready to view online................Well I dont have a tab on my bill me later account, my wife already payed it so I am sure this is a way of fishing some of my passwords from me.

Just another trick I am assuming so everyone needs to be carefull

One more possibility is ( in my opinion ) that Yahoo is pushing me to upgrade my viewing experience or some crap, I dont want to change, I like my mail just the way it is but they keep changing it to the new experience and I have to keep changing it back to classic view. I wouldnt put it past Yahoo to try and make it look like peoples accounts are being jeapordized just to make people make the switch.

Somethings in it for them that is for sure.

Edited September 7, 2012 by 1930 (see edit history)

[1936 D2]

Call me crazy but...

OK - You're Crazy!!!

...I am absolutely confident it has alot to do with the web browser we are forced to use now adays, I have up until recently used internet explorer 6. I love it, have had very few issues with any sort of viruses, I have never and still dont ( go ahead make my day ) have any virus protection because I do not have any issues/that cause the issues.

Geez! This is beyond living dangerously! Your machine is guaranteed infected! Right now!

...I have noticed that I am absolutely being spied on, I was searching a few weeks ago for a Baldor electric motor for a compressor I am working on and ever since my search I am now getting advertisements for electric motors pop up on adds ect. This is just one of many examples.

I take it you used one of the common search engines to do this search (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). ALL of these companies watch your search habits in an effort to direct particular advertising to you. If you "opt out" of these "directed search" things, you will still get a plethora of ads BUT they will have no particular rhyme or reason. That's all you are experiencing with the directed ads for electric motors.

I have never experienced this with Exp 6. THEY say 6 has holes and its no good and blah blah blah. That is a bunch of shiz, THEY want me to use their newer updated browser because THEY want to keep tabs on me that were harder to do with Explorer 6.

"Holes" - TRUE! The "bad guys" have had PLENTY of time to analyze the code used to make IE6 work and found MANY ways to use that browser as a door to attack your machine! Microsoft made some minor changes as things popped up but then made a major patch called IE6.5. After that they had used up their ability to patch that code to help protect the IE6.5 browser from those attacks but had to give up and design a whole new code set to make a more secure browser. Hence IE7. and since then, they now have IE8 for many of the same reasons. You really need to at least be at the IE7 level depending on your Operating System. (Hopefully you have allowed regular Microsoft updates to load on your WindowsXP OS. If not - shame on you! You would be contributing to the proliferation of nasty code on the web without those updates!) NO machine should be operating on the web today with viruses, Trojans, SpyWare, or MalWare because of the tools available to prevent that. If you are worried about the cost, worry no more. Go out and load a copy of "Microsoft Security Essentials" FOR FREE at: Spyware Protection | Free Spyware Protection | Microsoft Security Essentials and help protect us ALL please! I just installed a copy of this software on a friend's machine. It was very easy to do, the software ran on the machine (which had limited RAM - only 512MB) quite smoothly, was able to find 7 Trojan viruses on the machine and eliminated them all with no ill effects to the OS. I was satisfactorily impressed.

There are a few other "free" anti-virus softwares out there that are good also like ("AVG" or "Avira" and others) and if you don't mind paying around $15.00 for a year of coverage you can find sales on "McAfee" products pretty often or on the order of $30.00 on sale for "Norton Symantec" products. All good stuff.

Another good idea is to use a different browser all together. Try "Mozilla Firefox" as a browser. I think you would really like it if you like IE6. It does even more than IE and is generally more secure because Crackers like to attack IE because it is the most used browser world wide.

Another good browser is "Google Chrome". It is a very "light" browser so if you are short on memory and your machine is already running slow, the light weight browsers are helpful with that too. "Chrome" has no real "frills" like IE and Firefox but is rock solid. One of the neat things about it is that all the tabs are isolated from each other so if one web site crashes it does not take out the whole browser, just that one tab. It gives you a chance to save what's going on in the other tabs before you restart the browser. Cool! I can regularly run eight separate tabs with no slowdown of the browser.

...I realize now there are waay to many wack jobs out there.

Yup. That's for sure. And they are ALWAYS trying to get into your machine. Sometimes just to turn it into a "zombie" and other times to grab your data and maybe empty your bank account!

And I think I know how they got it and it was as I think D-2 was saying in that some time ago I was told my account had been jeapordized or something and I needed to go here or there to sign in and get it fixed. ... I dont know any better so I did...

Whoops! Now THERE's your problem! NEVER click on a hot link in an email if you were not expecting said link! BUT you can also get infected just by going to a particular web page, usually after a search. Those are called "drive by attacks" and you don't even know they are happening because all you need to do is go to the page and look at it. That's it!

...Somethings in it for them (Yahoo) that is for sure.

Yup. Advertising. If they can improve the advertising impact by sending you only stuff that may interest you, you eventually will be more likely to click through that ad and that's how they make their money through advertising. If you get a bunch of stuff that is of no interest to you they are just wasting their time and bandwidth. That's what it's all about. Directed advertising to improve your "experience". If they were to try and do something nefarious because of all this "spying" as you call it, they would be out of business in a very short time because they could not afford the ramifications of the class action suits!

I think your bravado and your paranoia are showing through just a bit. It is smart though to be suspect of unexpected stuff coming your way on the computer and it is also more than smart to protect your investment (data) by using some (any) form of virus prevention software more than none at all. Please reconsider and do the right thing for the rest of us too who are trying their darnedest to keep "safe on the web".

Edited September 8, 2012 by 1936 D2 (see edit history)

[Guest 1930]

I save everything important on a disk, I dont save anything on my comp.

I do use Mozilla now and I do like it very much but not nearly as much as Internet Explorer 6. I still use 6 sometimes since both are loaded still on my comp.

I changed my password so hopefully this may be over.

[Guest DodgeKCL]

I was going to post my latest scam but had not gotten around to it 'til I saw this thread. About 2 weeks ago I received 2 e-mails stating a 'Rick Brinker' was the new admin. for the DB Brothers site and if I wanted to continue I had to state my 'handle' and my password by return e-mail. I just ignored the 1st one but when a 2nd one came in from a cell phone I got curious. I e-mailed Peter and said I was sure it was a scam but was it? He assured me it was scam and to NEVER give out any of that info to ANYBODY. Peter knows our handles and our passwords and e-mail addresses and does not need to ask. I still use Intenet Explorer. I down loaded Google Chrome but found I lost a lot of sites. I tested it to see what sites it give me in response to certain words. Many of my usual sites did not appear in the response pages. Don't understand why that happens. And I'm a retired electronics engineer that got into machine software programming at the end of my career. Possibly it would appear the search engine companies have certain policies as to what sites they will and will not write into their firmware. It appears they have legions of key punchers who do nothing all day but find sites and enter them into their engine but do it according to the companies policy outlines. So if we use their engine we are at the mercy of their site inclusion policy. I erased Google Chrome and went back to Explorer. Some sites asked me to upgrade by a certain date but the dates have gone and I can still get in to the site. I have a suspicion it's in the advertising dollars that they get on the new engine.

Edited September 9, 2012 by DodgeKCL (see edit history)

[1936 D2]

And the reason they are looking for "handles" and PW's is that SO MANY people use the same "handles" and PW's for other sites, that the bad guys may be able to glean, for example, your banking password and possibly user name to hijack some other totally separate account than the one they "phished" the info from. (like your example).

Best plan again are STRONG PASSWORDS and DIFFERENT ACCOUNT LOGIN INFO for each site you use.

[1936 D2]

I save everything important on a disk, I dont save anything on my comp.

One of the ways the Trojans work is that they will reside in your "My Documents" folder so that they will follow Backup Data to where ever you save it, and/or will copy themselves to ANY removable media you use - CD, DVD, Flash or thumb drives, backup drives, and Network Attached Storage (or NAS) as examples. So that idea really is a false hope of safety.

I changed my password so hopefully this may be over.

EXCELLENT! I hope so too. Now just load some free anti-virus software and you may have a chance at catching the viruses either on the way in via the web, email or external device connection or when you attach external media and they try to propagate TO that media.

[Guest 1930]

One of the ways the Trojans work is that they will reside in your "My Documents" folder so that they will follow Backup Data to where ever you save it, and/or will copy themselves to ANY removable media you use - CD, DVD, Flash or thumb drives, backup drives, and Network Attached Storage (or NAS) as examples. So that idea really is a false hope of safety.

EXCELLENT! I hope so too. Now just load some free anti-virus software and you may have a chance at catching the viruses either on the way in via the web, email or external device connection or when you attach external media and they try to propagate TO that media.

I did not know this about disk deal ( thanks for that ) and no waay am I downloading any kind of spyware, I have been doing this comp thing since 2003 or so and all this time trouble free for the most part and when I do have a problem ( maybe once or twice a year on a bad year ) I just re-boot my operating system and it dosent cost be a dime. ( other than a little bit of time )

I have the same comp. by the way, my one and only comp that I have owned and am so happy with it I bought a second version off of e-bay just in case.

Edited September 8, 2012 by 1930 (see edit history)

[Guest DodgeKCL]

I've long ago come to the conclusion that a lot of the internet is just an updated form of CB radio. Remember the nonsense that went on with that? You couldn't trust the voice on the other end of the radio and you certainly wouldn't do business over the the CB channels. Or would you? I remember talking 'skip' to voices thousands of miles away. The internet is much more useful for straight information and of course contact with the world is now in our homes. But like CB radio I have grave misgivings about anything I read on the net. Everybody could hear what you were saying on CB just like they can on the net. Not much has changed as far as I can see but the scams are more sophisticated and can be costly. Knowing what I know I refuse to put ANY of my bank accounts or charge accounts (Visa etc.) on the net or use their sites to pay bills or move my money around. No way Jose. I do use my land line to the bank and Visa but I won't use a cell phone. It can be broken into.

[Guest 1930]

I have a paypal because I purchase items from e-bay but I will not do any sort of banking on the comp. other than that and I dont get mixed up in the credit card mess so I dont have to worry about that.

I used to enjoy playing around with my ham radio