My email was hijacked

[Elsa Franker]

Dear all,

A while ago, my email was hijacked and a message was sent out from this my email address saying that "I had been mugged in Manila and needed money to get home". If you got this email, I trust you all immediately saw that this peculiar message was a scam and treated it in the only way it deserved - delete, into the waste basket.

As if that wasn´t enough, these gangsters also had re-directed my incoming email to - I don' t know where, so a number of my incoming emails are totally lost.

Fortunately, the Yahoo people were very helpful and did their best to sort it all out for me, but some of my emails are lost forever for me.

I have since heard that other people, too, have been subjected to this kind of scam. Even if one hears about it, it is so frightening when it happens to me, to myself. The terribly unpleasant feeling that someone else has had the hacker skill of stealing my email address and using it in my name, is indescribable. I felt so exposed, vulnerable and threatened.

Previously, we have had tons and tons of "Nigeria letters", but locations seem to have been changed to Manila now. 

I just hope all this hasn´t caused any trouble to this our group, and I´m very unhappy about it. I have never been to Manila and the chances that I would ever go there are very scant indeed, as I don´t like hot climate and therefore stay away from such places.

Best wishes

Elsa

[Meg Crane]

Dear Elsa

 

I should think most of us have had a few of these e-mails before, and have learned to see through them - usually you can tell there's something wrong, because they tend to be written in American English, and you know which, if any, of your friends are likely to write in that way! I always reply by asking a specialist question which only a real friend would know the answer to - e.g. "Which group of poets particularly interests me?". I've never yet had a response!

 

I'm very sorry that you have lost some of your e-mails, but I don't think you need worry about the rest of us. I hope it doesn't happen to you again.

 

Meg

 

 

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[Elsa Franker]

Dear Meg,

Many thanks for your comforting answer. I knew that no one of you would take an email like that seriously. Still, it feels really uncomfortable to know that someone has taken the trouble of hijacking my email address, and then having the insolence to believe that people on my list of contacts would fall for a message like that!!! But as you say, we always have to be careful and on the alert.

I like that trick of yours, asking a question about personal preferences, such as the favourite poet. Or, just delete it and throw it straight into the waste-basket. It was an experience though, but an experience that I could have done very well without.

Best

Elsa

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From: Meg Crane <megm...@gmail.com>
To: ww1...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 15:59
Subject: Re: My email was hijacked