Odd email from ?Yahoo

[woolybanana]

Had an email telling me my account has exceeded its limit on the Yahoo server and to contact them via my Yahoo email address. Never had this before nor is my a/c overloaded as I keep deleting stuff.

Anyone had such a thing, is it a scam? Thoughts please.

Thank you

[Pierre ZFP]

It's a phishing scam of course.

It's been going around for a few years now

More info HERE

[woolybanana]

Thank you, Pierre, I thought so.

Interesting though, reading the warning page that it refers to the hijacking of the account and the sending of bogus messages, usually asking for money; I had just such a message from a very old friend a few days ago and phoned up to find out what was what. It turned out that she had been hijacked and that all those on her contacts list had been sent a begging letter, saying she was in trouble in the Philippines and needed money.

She wisely got a computer bod in to sort things out. I guess the message I got today was an overhang from all that.

Regards,

Tim

[Pierre ZFP]

Unfortunately now everyone on your friend's contact list can expect a whole raft of such scam/spam messages as the list gets sold from one evil scammer to another. It makes me so angry [:@]

[YCCMB]

Last time I got one of those it was from my son whom I'd just spoken to (by phone...at his home in South London) Less than five minutes later, he was in Greece, having been robbed and in need of a transfer of funds to him by Western Union.

Time travel is a wonderful thing.

[AnOther]

Of course it's a scam, it's not from Yahoo at all and they are after your login info which you'll willingly give them if you respond as it will ask you to log in again !

Emails purportedly from people you know do not mean that your A/C has been hacked or compromised, if that happens the hacker will change the PW and you'll be locked out, scammers can spoof any email address.

Never a bad idea to change your PW though [;-)]

[NickP]

Don't open it just forward onto phishing@yahoo.com. Most companies like Paypal and Ebay etc. have a phishing@wthaever address, it helps them to identify and maybe deal with scammers. Even if that's a waste of time;at least I feel that I've done something positive against the idiots who have tried to scam me.

[vette]

One thing that I have done is to delete all of my contacts from my e-mail program.

I have recreated them all in a normal letter type document so if I can't remember one, they are all available, but not to the scammers.

[Chancer]

They are only available to scammers if you give them your password, most of us are a little to wise to fall for their tricks but some can be quite convincing, whenever you get a suspect mail from one of your contacts hover the cursor over their name and it will show you the senders address, 99% of the time its not theirs unless the hackers have gained control.

 

Its my belief that the majority of phishing attempts I get are due to the complete incompetence of 99% of French people who send group E-mails but dont use the "blind carbon copy" function and I can count all of the clubs that I use in that and all of the members, in fact when they reply or even send some complete rubbish to someone else like a photo of their grand-daughter they will send it to every person.

 

Finally I have given up advising people I know that their inboxes have been hacked, I get so many mails purporting to be from my friends that I would spend all day doing it, these are nearly all vetry intelligent people but I think the key factor in them being caught out is that they all have children who whilst far more computer savvy than I will ever be are still very naive in other ways.

 

Dont allow your children to use your computer!

[AnOther]

[quote user="Chancer"]I have given up advising people I know that their inboxes have been hacked, I get so many mails purporting to be from my friends that I would spend all day doing it[/quote]I repeat, that does not mean their computers or email A/C's have been hacked !

[Chancer]

I long ago learned not to get frustrated with people that I percieved to be perhaps not as on the ball as myself, sermonising them serves for nothing. I comfort myself with the fact that for every person that frustrates me there are many more that I will frustrate they ussually have the good sense and manners not to show it.

We cant be experts in every field and computers hold little interest for me and as I am not (wrongly) advising these people that their in box has been hacked I am not doing any harm, but I will take note and if ever I do contact someone I will say that their contacts list has been lifted and E-mails are being sent out puprporting to be from them, when I have done this in the past using the wrong terminology they have thanked me, had someone remove the virus or whatever it was and reported back that the problem seemed to be resolved, people were no longer getting the E-mails which leads me to think that something somewhere had installed itself or at least had access to their contacts.