CONSUMER ALERT Watch out!

[Puppyraiser]

Linda Wassell's email address book has been hijacked.

If you receive an email from her suggesting that she needs a loan for a week, and not to call her, but reply to the email because she is in England, NEITHER OF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE!!!

She has lost her entire address book, so she can't send a message to anyone.

BEWARE!

 

[Shayla]

This happened to a friend of my mom's a few months
ago. Everyone on her e-mail list got emergency notes,
saying she was stuck somewhere on an island or
in South America. It asked the person to click a link
and send her money to help out. Sounds like something
ridiculous, but when it appears to have been sent by
that person, friends can be fooled.

Mom called her at home instead of clicking the link,
and the poor lady was beside herself with it all.

 

[D_Derbonne]

This happened to a friend of mine recently. She had to abandon her email address completely.
#### cybercriminals!

 

[Luddite]

Got my addy list on a disc here(Yes, It has been scanned as clean, so I can install as needed!).Too many to remember otherwise.....Great, more to worry about. L.

 

[Patricia Kotnour]

Someone told me a long time ago that the best way to keep the crooks out of your address book is to add addresses to nowhere at the top...for example.....aaabb127. You always want to make sure it is the first one in your book. You may even want to add more than one fake address.

He explained that by putting these fake addresses first in your address book, anyone trying to break into your email address list will be stopped before they get started. Another good thing to do is when you are sending to many addresses at once, put the (brackets like these before the first address and after the last). What that does is hides the addresses from the receiver as well as anyone who may be searching for e-mail addresses through forwarded mail. And....when you forward something....erace all the addresses from those who have forwarded before you, first, or copy and paste the e-mail to a new one with only the addresses you are sending to....(but bracket them before you send). If everyone does this, there would be less e-mail addresses for the crooks to highjack. It may not stop them completely, but an ounce of prevention......

 

[Ylva]

Not sure if that works Pat, but I just added some fun contacts to my list....
if it works; great. If not; I had fun making them up.

 

[Jeff Rodier]

Pat the simple way to hide the adresses when sending to multiples is to use Blind Carbon Copy. Appears as BCC in the address section. Address to a single recipient and then BCC all other addresses and nobody will see any address other than thier own.


Also on the bogus address it must be the first in your book so a whole bunch of a's at bogus.com will stop the list from going anywhere.

 

[Ylva]

I entered 5 so far, with far more creative dotcoms. yrscrwd.com

 

[Patricia Kotnour]

I forgot to mention that because numbers are first to come up, if your email address has a number first or any of the addresses on your list, they will come up before the A's. Just using a bunch of a's may not do the trick. I would make more than one of both numbers and letters.

I would use several 1's first with other numbers, such as 11123222. Or, for letters aaaaaapple. Use a word that no one would be able to figure out. Doesn't matter what it is.

My friend said that there are computorized automatic search programs that will try to latch onto your address book and send out all sorts of information to the people in it. If the first address is a bogus one it can't go any farther and it stops the search in its tracks.

Thanks Jeff, the brackets worked, but I didn't know what BBC was. Now that I do, I will use it.

 

[Baer Charlton]

A space is also counted, but is counted first. No need for a whole line of numbers or letter..... " 1A@scuwyu.cux" is all you need.

of course there is also " 1American@agxst.ch" . . . (.ch is Red China . . . .cn is Canada)

 

[Framar]

.ca is Canada.

Don't know what .cn is for.

 

[framah]

.cn is China
.ch is Switzerland

google search the ."whatever" and the the word "domain" and it comes right up.

 

[Framar]

.ch is for Switzerland because?????

Ooh, ooh! I know - Swiss CHEESE, right?

 

[FramerDave]

.ch is for Switzerland because?????

Ooh, ooh! I know - Swiss CHEESE, right?

It's from the Latin Confoederatio Helvetica, or Helvetican Confederation. Maybe an odd choice, but maybe it makes sense if you consider that there are four official languages in Switzerland: German, Italian, French and Romansch.

 

[Framar]

Gosh, ya learns something new every day, here on the Grumble!

 

[Puppyraiser]

...and to think there are those who believe we are wasting our time here....

 

[framah]

Even Antarctica has a domain!!! .aq

Here's a couple more interesting ones:

.kp North Korea
.kr South Korea
.nt Neutral Zone
.td Chad

 

[JWB9999999]

Chad is that way because it's spelled beginning with a T in French, the main language there (Tchad).

 

[Paul N]

Gosh, ya learns something new every day, here on the Grumble!

Well duh!!

We get our valuable info from that thingie called.............Google!