Sunday, June 29, 2014

An Impostor stealing my email





I was about going to bed, when a good friend of mine who served together with me as a Member of the Public Service Commission sent me an alert that my email is sending out spam. I replied that I received an earlier SMS informing me that he received an email purportedly from me asking for help since I fell victim to an attack at a car park near a hotel in Manchester. So he asked me to get to my email account and reset my settings to which I did.
                  Unfortunately a good number of my contacts had been flooded by the scam email, which was the work of an impostor who stole my email account. The person must have managed to circumvent the security settings and breached my email and fortunately for me, no one had been poorer by responding to my "distress" call on the net. I was puzzled as how someone could steal my email and the contacts, despite my using Yahoo Mail Plus service and I have to pay for using it. Since I could not rely on its security, I cancelled my annual subscription forthwith. The good thing that comes out from this nasty episode is that I had learned not to link my email to other applications, and thus I had "cleaned" all the linkages, which I hope will avoid such an incident in the future. A lot of friends called me up to find out the real situation and they were relieved that I am safe and sound in Kelana Jaya.
         Selamat mengerjakan Ibadat Ramadhan Kareem to all my Muslim friends.

6 comments:

kaykuala said...

Dear Hal,
It was most fortunate no one got 'hurt' I received a copy also. They somehow hijacked the contacts that placed friends nicely in their hands. Friends certainly would want to help! They got the weakest link at their mercy!

Hank

abdulhalimshah said...

It is a lesson learned, my email can be compromised!

Al-Manar said...

I was about to email you to seek more information on the mail that came when I decided to pop in here. Yes, you have this explaned. Like Hank I am glad no one was 'hurt'. But I am worried for my own mail - what should be done to avoid from such incidents.

I am glad you are back blogging.

abdulhalimshah said...

Dear Pakcik,
There is really no foolproof method to stop this scam as whatever device is installed, people can still steal, coz they are actually cyber criminals. We can only hope that the firewall one has may be able to defend the attacks,but crooks are always two steps ahead.

norzah said...

My, my this is almost a year old. No new posting, Bro?
Why? Surely no one is tempering with your account now. Hackers there still are but their work can be easily detected.

abdulhalimshah said...

Akhi, sorry for the long absence, as I have decided to layoff for the time being.