Need help- Friend's gmail has been hacked and scammed

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

Hi, I'm a big a fan of this site and of all your work, although I must say I haven't visited in while. Yesterday my friend's gmail account was apparently been hacked and the scammers emailed all his friends, including me, asking for a loan to help him out of a bogus travel bind. I'm sure you've heard of this. I wrote my friend back to warn him, and the scammer replied trying to convince me it was really my friend.

I'd like to see this scammer get what's coming to him, but I am not at all set up to do this. Since the lead is hot (I just got the original plea for help yesterday and his bogus reply today) I thought I'd see if anyone here wants to take up the flag and toy with this guy.

I can post more details if anyone is interested.

Thanks for looking and keep up the good work!

Booli

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 5:11 pm

Hello,
Write your friend in different way than email and tell him to restore his gmail account as quickly as possible. Once its done send everyone warning about this criminal scumbag.

Writing your friend email is pretty useless since he changed the password and therefore is controlling his email account. So just call him, text him, use live messenger ... anything but things he already "hacked"

Also, you can always write to eater's sister site http://www.scamwarners.com/ Wink

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 5:13 pm

Sorry to hear about your friend's problem. Most likely he was phished rather than hacked, but that's a minor detail. The important thing is for him to contact gmail to recover his account.

This is a very common scam, unfortunately. Your friend needs to contact everyone he can think of to assure them that he's not stranded and to warn them not so send any money.

Unfortunately it wouldn't be a good idea to put the address up here for us to bait since it will be in your friend's real name, and hopefully he'll be getting his account back through gmail's password recovery system.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, my friend is aware of having his email compromised and has reset his account password. I guess that shuts down the possibility of toying with the scammer. I wasn't thinking clearly.

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 5:27 pm

Check the email scammer sent, there may be some "Reply-to" different address. Scammers commonly do that in case of recovering the email account. This way they can talk with victims even after your friend got his account recovered. Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

No such luck as an alternative reply-to address, at least not yet.

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 6:59 pm

Probably best to focus on the immedate security risk - ie, that your friends contacts - than to prioritise baiting the lad. Safety first Wink

As an aside, how many accounts actually get properly hacked? and how many are phished? I know of one person not so far away who had her ebay account "hacked" but it turned out that her password was so insanely obvious that it had been simply guessed. Strong passwords ftw. You'd go insane trying to guess mine.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

Good point. But, other than my friend recovering his gmail account, what can be done about all his friends addresses (like mine) that are now in the wind. I assume there is nothing to be done, but it never hurts to ask.

Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 7:28 pm

Just make sure to warn everyone who was on his contact list that they might be getting more varied scam mails, (Next of kin, trunk box, recovery scams, etc.), as these lowlifes search for any possibility of getting cash out of this. (Depending on how good the scammer is, some of these might actually be quite convincing)

Once they have an E-mail address, they'll probably never stop mailing it and will probably sell it to other scammers too. But as long as they don't get any money out of it, it'll just be more annoying spam to bin.
If it gets too annoying, can always just abandon the account and create a new one anyways.

419Eater is my life Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 366

Besides recovering his email address your friend needs to check that his email once recovered is not still being forwarded to the scammer.

p.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

Good idea. How would you suggest he do that?

Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 4:08 pm

^^Gmail offers the configuration of mail rules called "Filters"

Check "Settings" on the top right, then click "Filters". If there's a "fowarding" filter present, just delete it Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 May 2010 Posts: 6

Thanks; I'll pass it on.

BTW, I really respect and appreciate all the work you guys do...and I have enjoyed literally hours and hours of side splitting fun reading about your exploits! Keep up the good work.

419Eater is my life Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 366

@@ Booli

Quote:

Good idea. How would you suggest he do that?

A business friend of mine recently had his email compromised with a I am stranded lad. I was on the phone with him and we releaized that bait messages I sent after he recovered his email had never arrived.

A lttle digging led us to the message forwarding as well as the password change by the lad.

p.

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 1:06 am

hey I just noticed that some of my posts which were posted in this particular topic have been deleted. Is it normal for the mods to delete posts without letting you know. I understand if its a double post, but I think I should maybe get an email as to why the post was removed so I dont make the same mistake again.

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 8:56 am

^^^
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=176248#penalties

Quote:

When one of your posts is deleted you generally will be informed of it, unless it's something small like a double post or if it's a very obvious violation of the forum rules.

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