Warwickshire Trading Standards is raising awareness of bogus emails that appear to come from your friends. A Warwickshire resident reported to the service that she had had what appeared to be a genuine email from her friend to say that she had been attacked abroad and her money and passport stolen. The email asked for money to be sent.
At first glance the email looked potentially genuine as it used her friends own email address and signature and mentioned a location abroad, close to where her friend had genuinely been on holiday.
These types of bogus emails are usually sent out when an individuals email account is hacked (broken in to). If a hacker breaks in to your email account he can send out bogus emails to all the people on your email contacts list. He may also have access to your email correspondence. If you use the same email address or email/password combination for other websites such as social media sites (twitter & facebook), banking websites and commercial websites it won't take a determined hacker long to gain access to these websites as well!
How do I know if my email account has been hacked?
- Your friends receive bogus or spam email from you
- You begin to receive lots of 'bounced' emails from random email addresses you don't know indicating that your email address is being used to send spam email out
- You can't access your email account at all or your setting have been changed
What can you do?
- If you can access your account, go in to it and change your password and settings. Do this for all accounts where you use the same email address/password combination. You may also need to use a different email address for these accounts.
- Visit your email services help page. This will give you additional guidance
- Warn your friends (and others as necessary) that your email account has been hacked
- Run anti-virus software on your PC to ensure it is clear
Preventing problems in the future
- Avoid listing your main email address publically on-line
- Don't use public computers to check your emails. You have no knowing if they are infected with malware designed to steal your email address and password. Warwickshire library computers - anti-virus software is regularly updated and external devices are virus checked before use.
- Please feel free to cascade this information to whom ever you feel appropriate (including using the information in your newsletters/websites etc.).
Simon Cripwell
Senior Information Officer
Trading Standards Service
Communities
Warwickshire County Council
tel. 01926 414039
mob. 07771 975570
email. simoncripwell@warwickshire.gov.uk
web. www.warwickshire.gov.uk
My normal working days are Monday to Thursday
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