Hacked email !!!

[graham-xrf]

It's sad we are driven to this, but @twhite is absolutely right about human behaviour. For some years now, I have run my own private email server, and the log shows it under attempted attack every few minutes. Robot pingers trying out the IP address! I have had to deploy SpamAssassin and other origin verification software to block them. Even so, in normal use, your e-mail address will be gathered, and sold in a batch with zillions of others, to be worked on by spammers and scammers.

Lately, I have been deleting emails from a persistent blackmailer who (wrongly) informs me he has some bad news for me, and has control of my computer, (he doesn't), and a lot of pictures of me doing exotic and rudely compromising stuff (hmm.. would that be nice?)

So - no, you are not the "winner" of any prize informed by email. No, and if any arrangement involving payment changes comes by email, it's only true if change is actually made by separately contacting the bank. I might extend @twhite 's observation. Humans are (I think) the only kind that specialize in lies. The only ones that kill their own species for gain other than survival. Using our skills to communicate a falsehood for gain is what we do. We even have the concept of expecting it!

Ref: Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac)
"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies".

 

[Cadillac STS]

I think a huge problem is we hardly ever hear of any penalty for these hackers. Never hear of people going to prison it seems like.

If it were well known there would be penalties that would help slow it up.

Would also be nice to have a fund for bounties on information leading to prosecutions. ”Ex-friend funds…”

 

[34_40]

I think a huge problem is we hardly ever hear of any penalty for these hackers. Never hear of people going to prison it seems like.

If it were well known there would be penalties that would help slow it up.

Would also be nice to have a fund for bounties on information leading to prosecutions. ”Ex-friend funds…”

I agree - we never hear of any people being caught, maybe because they aren't or perhaps they are not in our city/county/country? idk..
I was tapped for a couple grand recently, luckily the C Card company ran interference for us. So a minor inconvenience of contacting vendors to update them but it's better than the alternative! I like the "Bounty" idea! Thieves of any kind suck!

 

[Boswell]

for years I ran my own mail server but the workload of keeping in protected from the increscent attacks was just more trouble that it was worth. I am sorry for you loss in the attack.

 

[FOMOGO]

Sorry about the loss of funds Martin. That truly sucks. Mike

 

[great white]

Bummer. I delete or mark as “spam“ anything that I don’t recognize in the email address. Also, if it looks like there’s “errors“ or suspicious text in the message, it goes to spam.

I don’t open attachments, even if I know the sender. Things that look like they’re legit get downloaded and opened in a sandbox.

Crazy what you have to do today to protect yourself online. It really is the “wild west” online right now

A lot of the issue is the criminals have figured out the cracks and loopholes of stealing things online and are always 2 steps ahead of enforcement, if they bother to follow up at all….

 

[NCjeeper]

In my limited experience law enforcement is either lax about scams or lack the tools to hunt the dirt down and arrest them. I know our county prosecutor doesn't pursue them.
This enables the scum. I feel for you.

When I retired in 2018 from a large dept. with a city of nearly a million people, we had 4 fraud Detectives. When they would come in on a Monday morning each Detective would have a stack of new cases to solve. The case load was so over whelming that they literally had about 30 minutes to spend on a case and that was it. So unless there is a known suspect that an arrest warrant can be issued for, the case will just go inactive. The burn out rate was high for obvious reasons. A lot of them would leave and go work for a bank making twice as much doing the same thing.

 

[RJSakowski]

Theft is a business. As long as the rewards outweigh the risk, thieves will continue. Even if the scammers do get caught and end up doing prison time, their annual "salary", based on the length of sentencing can be in the six and seven figure range. There needs to be a huge disincentive.

If it were up to me, I would bring back medieval torture practices and mandate more aggressive law enforcement practices,

 

[Martin W]

Bummer. I delete or mark as “spam“ anything that I don’t recognize in the email address. Also, if it looks like there’s “errors“ or suspicious text in the message, it goes to spam.

I don’t open attachments, even if I know the sender. Things that look like they’re legit get downloaded and opened in a sandbox.

Crazy what you have to do today to protect yourself online. It really is the “wild west” online right now

A lot of the issue is the criminals have figured out the cracks and loopholes of stealing things online and are always 2 steps ahead of enforcement, if they bother to follow up at all….

The problem was we received emails from this supplier regularly. Like for the last 15 years.It would have been nice to have been given a heads up that they were hacked, but they were too busy trying to fix their own issues.
Martin

 

[Martin W]

I think in the future you could protect yourself with your customers by improving your payment terms and contracts.

It’s extra work, but writing into your contract that changes in payment terms will only come via certified mail would better protect both parties.

I’m sure there is a better solution than what I’m proposing here. But contracts work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes contracts are the way to go. Hindsight is 20 20 I guess
The problem was these are customers who we deal with regularly for the last 15-17 years. i Have to be careful because these are good customers who pay steady , never complain, always keep us busy. That is a hard thing to find in this day and age. One has already said he will feed us more work to try and make back some of the losses.

We have added to our invoices our payment terms. And they are not to change unless I physically change this in person.

We have copies of the emails that the hacker’s sent. Whoever they are they were good. I probably would have fallen for it too And sent my payment.

Martin