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Other => General Topics => Topic started by: SUSZANNAH on March 09, 2011, 09:46:21 PM
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hi all, someone (being polite) hacked into my aol account and sent emails to every one in my address book including the ones i deleted last week....... :(
i have changed both my email passwords (phone included) scanned with avast, superantispyware, adaware the only thing found was tracking cookies with malwarebytes.... can anyone think of anything i missed?
did the scans on both pc's Toshiba Sattelite and my compaq desktop...... thanks guys
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Nope Suse the main thing is changing your passwords, it was probably a hack from outside your system
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thanks essex, appreciate the reassurance :)
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'Tis my one aim in life - to reassure pretty ladies 8)
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awwww shucks ;D
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I would also notify aol fraud dept. about this since this happened to a friend of mine as well and they became victims of ID Theft. If they got into your aol account, that could also mean they got into your billing access as well, which includes your means of how you pay and your demographic information. You may also want to change your other passwords to things you do online as well and put a type of fraud alert on your credit accounts to be on the safe side and check these other accounts as well.
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You should also stop using this email address and get a new one.
Your friends should also be told to stop accepting any emails that come from you old email address
so that they don't wind up also becoming victims.
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thanks safeSurf....did all you suggested :)
no idea how it happened especially with all the security i have on here, and i hadn't even used either pc in 2 or 3 days :(
hi bob, have changed the password on my email address as it's the main one registered on aol i cannot delete it so will use it with new password :)
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thanks safeSurf....did all you suggested :)
no idea how it happened especially with all the security i have on here, and i hadn't even used either pc in 2 or 3 days :(
hi bob, have changed the password on my email address as it's the main one registered on aol i cannot delete it so will use it with new password :)
Unfortunately continuing to use the email account puts all of your friends at risk since there is no way to know which email
actually comes from you and which one contains the infection coming from the hijacker.
The only way to protect your friends is to used a different email address.
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i can see where you are coming from, but can't figure out why there was no infection on my pc's after all the scans i did...how does that work???
a had a few 'not delivered reports as it was spam' yesterday (you alerted me to it) nothing since!!!
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I agree with Bob on this. You could have received in your spam box some phishing email and not known about it, but you are putting yourself and others at risk. I would create a new account after talking to aol Fraud dept. Like I said earlier, this happened to a friend of mine and it just got worse once they had their email account because so many things are related to it.
The other thing you can do, is ask aol to keep this account but not make it a master account and change your mail settings to not allow any mail to come in/out for at least 1 - 2 years so you can monitor other activity for possible ID Theft (e.g. see if your friends are getting email from this account while you basically inactivated it).
Also, contact everyone and company associated with this account and change it to a new email account, especially financial institutions (and change your account numbers just in case). You would want to do this quickly as the people behind this are rather quick. :o I've been a victim in the past long ago, so I can relate to how this works, but I beat the ones trying to scam me because I was so quick and I'm good behind a PC. ;D And you have to know what steps to take immediately should such a thing happen to you.
You may also want to not use the aol desktop, which forces you to lower your security settings (allow java, etc.), and instead use the aol web-based instead where you can control more settings and security features. IMO, I would also sign up for a different email account server as well. There are plenty out there that are free and more secure.
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Simply get a gmail account and set it up with a stron password to start with.
I've been using gmail for a long time as you already know. :)
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everything sorted now, i have a had a gmail account since i had my android phone so will use that email address, once again thanks all :)
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everything sorted now, i have a had a gmail account since i had my android phone so will use that email address, once again thanks all :)
Don't forget to send an email out to all your contacts to let them know not to accept any further emails coming from you under
the old AOL email address. :)
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all done :) i will tell you personally, bob only accept emails from my gmail account lol, easy to tell it will be from me :)
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Glad you got it sorted out. :) This isn't an easy thing to go through, but I'm happy to hear you resolved it.