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Heh, shoulda googled first.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=723bb9c675d152af&hl=en
"Email Account was hacked, suspicious email was sent to entire contact list. Everything was deleted!"
And it's the exact same email -- except for the hotel phone number and the email address, which is also @ymail.
It does seem that these things are resulting from the sender's email account being hacked.
That page contains directions to a site for recovering accounts and messages for Gmail.
http://knol.google.com/k/how-to-recover-a-hacked-or-compromised-gmail-account?pli=1#When_you_reclaim_Your_Account
The ISP (or hotmail or yahoo) should be able to provide similar instructions for other kinds of accounts.
Note that at Gmail you can click at the bottom of the page to get details of recent account activity. Mine currently says:
Last account activity: 15 minutes ago at this IP (mine). Details
and it shows there has been only my own activity.
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Finally, I got one! Everybody else seems to, but not me, nooo. No long-lost cousins, and no weird emails, for me.
So this one is special weird -- because I got it through the Ancestry message system. Or so it is made to look like. It starts out:
"This message has been sent through the Ancestry connection service. Simply reply to this email to respond to j__k__1 through the connection service."
and it contains all the other standard Ancestry text.
And the message is:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
I really don't mean to inconvenience you right now but I made
a quick trip to the Malaysia and I lost a bag which contains
my passport and credit cards. I know this may sound odd,
but it all happened very fast. I've been to the US embassy
and they're willing to help me fly without my passport but I just
have to pay for my ticket and settle some bills. Right now I'm
out of cash plus i can't access my bank without my credit card
over here. I have contacted them but they need more verification.
I'm just gonna have to plead with you to lend me some funds
right now? I'll pay back as soon as I get home. I need to get on
the next available flight home.
Please reply as soon as you get this message so I can
forward the details as to where to send the funds. You can
reach me via the hotel's desk phone if you can, this number,
_______ You can also email me via my yahoomail, as I can
easily access it here [email protected]
I await your response...
Thanks
J____ K____
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well.
I had PM contact with JK once, in 2006. It was about a correction she'd made to a record at ancestry.ca and I was enquiring whether she knew a related person whom I had known in the 1970s. I sent her a PM, she replied, I thanked her by message to her hotmail account.
It's completely inexplicable that she would beg funds of me, let alone through the Ancestry system. I also doubt that she would say she was just "gonna" have to do anything, or end a statement with a question mark. Or go to "the Malaysia". ;)
So I've PMed her and forwarded the thing to Ancestry.
Ye gods.
Too bad for the scammer, anyhow. Her message was called "urgent". It's dated May 12. I don't check that account very often. I got it today.
... Okay, no PM in my inbox at that Ancestry account. So it looks like the breach was in her hotmail account.
Not just her address book, though -- the scammer used the whole standard form Ancestry private message system text, so it was the actual email containing the PM she had first sent me in reply to mine that was copied, presumably.
I don't think it was her Ancestry account that was breached, since the PMs that old seem to have been deleted.
Or ... was it MY email account that was breached, and somebody picked an old old message sent via the Ancestry system to scam me with?? Of all the messages in my inbox through that service, not to mention all the other messages, just pick the one that doesn't give any indication she's somebody I'd send money to? Hm.
Gmail shows no activity on my account since May 10 from any computer other than my own. So not my account, I think, no.
Anyhoo.
If you get any messages like this allegedly via Ancestry, from someone you've had previous contact that way with, let the person know,I guess.
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