In case any of you are getting e-mails from saying I’m stranded somewhere in the UK (or anywhere else) and need cash, it’s not true. Someone has hijacked my MSN e-mail account, and sent a pathetic story. I’m trying to get it straightened out. Don’t respond. Fun times! (Update: I’ve reset my password, so I’m assuming it’s safe now. But my contact list is wiped out , as well as the past several days’ of activity.)
Oh yeah…I tried to send send an Email back to CC,and all I got was another plea for cash.
The hacker is not the brightest. His grammer and sentence structure makes mine look good.
I always wonder why such supposedly smart people (the hackers) often can’t write well. I mean, hacking is hard and requires a high intelligence and education, but these hackers write like a 3rd grader with severe learning disability, or some uneducated third-world farmers.
Wow, that’s a really old one there. I think was two, maybe three years ago several of the people who had me in their contacts got hit with this exact scam via their yahoo accounts. The way the fake distress emails are worded makes it extremely obvious they’re not really from the party they claim to be from. Besides, everyone knows how cheap I am so they’d never email me for money. 😀
I believe it’s a pretty stupid bot that only gets people with passwords like “password”, “123456”, and so on. For shame, Paul!
Believe me, my password wasn’t that easy. I don’t know how they got it, and I’m not sure I want to.
The browser, maybe? I’m too paranoid to allow my browser to store passwords or form info, and of course I delete cache and history frequently.
But with Windows and even Mac these days there’s so much malware out there it’s scary. Even using Linux there are still browser vulnerabilities…
There are bots or similar routines that can be set to the task of hacking passwords by brute force, i.e. trying all possible combinations. The only way to make their task harder is to make the password longer.
I rolled my eyes when I saw that email. Remind me to dope slap ya next time we meet! =P
We all know that the Chinook could never have made it to the UK this quickly 🙂
I’m glad you posted this, as soon as I read the email I knew it was a scam. I wanted to write you, but I figured that since you had been hacked it would be pointless.
If you could, let us know when your email is replaced 🙂
-Richard
I’ve reset the password, and tested it. Seems ok now. My contact list is wiped out though.
Lord, this one again. It’s kinda funny if your contact list includes people actually located in London or wherever you are allegedly stranded, because their first reaction always is “well, why didn’t you just call or find me?” That happened to a friend of my wife and everyone had a good laugh at the scammer’s idiocy once they realized what was going on.
I just got a follow-up from “them.” To be honest (and maybe I’m just tired and gullible) but the first story was sorta believable – the original post. The follow up (from the compositional stand point) sucks.
It’s a good laugh when you see how much money they’re asking.
How much, exactly?
Actually, at what exact time did you get the latest e-mail from them?
The lousy grammar tipped me off, plus Niedermeyer trapped on the wrong side of the pond would have purloined an Amphicar and driven home, Lady Stephanie at his side.
Gmail actually flagged it as suspicious based on its content. Mine came in at 5:55am, and I replied before seeing the blog. What a drag. I suggest changing to a gmail acct.
Yeah, I got the email at 6:51 this am, also flagged. +1 on gmail.
paul, i hope you weren’t using that password on a lot of sites. i started using supergenpass.com after my jalopnik password got stolen. it creates a variation on a master password based on the domain name of the site that you are using. it’s basically a local javascript in your browser. nothing is stored on a server. very clever and secure and free.
8 stories in 4 days? Plus a family vacation to southern England?
Wow you are a busy man Paul! Or perhaps I should say Pauls.
I hope the Paul 2.0 that got my response to his unfortunate circumstances is in full recovery mode while Paul 1.0 is busy writing away in Oregon.
Glad to hear the Nigerian royal and Welsh prostitute were able to help clear this whole mess up for both of you.
I got this email this morning and MSN didn’t flag it since it CAME from MSN.
Several suspicious things lept out at me, first off, no long list of emails from your contacts list, and second, I knew you had just come back from a vacation here in the states and hadn’t said anything to us about heading to the UK but why would they get your money, cellphone, credit cards etc, but not your passports and no one was willing to help? That was the tipping of the iceberg and thus didn’t respond.
Had thought to email and inquire if you WERE OK but figured if you WERE hacked, we’d hear about it soon enough, well we have.
Glad it was what I thought it was!
Nobody legitimate is going to use the web for an appeal for cash because of some vacation emergency. Spotting some scams isn’t rocket science.