They’re out there. They’re very good. They’re evil.
A friend had her email account hacked with a phishing scam. She received a message that yahoo was making changes and needed her password. Without thinking about it, she sent the password.
Well, it wasn’t Yahoo asking for the password. She lost control of her account, lost all her messages and contact information for her business. Her friends are inundated by spam. Then they used the password to get into her facebook account. She lost control of it. This is certainly a big blow to her business.
What can we learn from this?
1. Never, ever link to site from an email asking for your login information or credit card. I don’t care if it means giving up your winnings in the British lottery.
2. Remember, neither your bank, ISP, nor any legitimate organization is going to ask you for your password in an email.
3. Do not depend on the cloud entirely for your data. Have a local backup of your data that you can access without web access.
4. Get a second and/or third email account. Gmail.com and Hotmail.com both offer free accounts that can import your emails from other accounts. Thus a free backup of your emails.
5. Yes, I hate passwords myself. Use different passwords for your sites. The longer they are the better. You may have to store them in a safe place. I know you cannot remember them all.
These people are very good at psychology. Their approach will not at first seem like anything other than someone trying to help you. They succeed because we do not expect people to be dishonest.
If you fall for the scam, your anti-virus program cannot protect you.
Be careful out there.
