e-mail address hijacked

[Grits]

All the contacts in my address book were sent an e-mail titled "a nice website" with a link. After sending it, the contents of my address book were wiped out :mad:

I have e-mailed everyone to let them know it was a hijack. One person so far e-mailed me to THANK ME FOR THE LINK! I warned her about what had happened and advised copying her address book immediately. Apparently, it looks legit. when you click on it. Everyone else could tell from the spelling and grammar that it wasn't really from me.

I have contacted Yahoo customer service who advised me to call yahoo account authorization, which is only open on weekdays, and to change my password.

I have a Mac and have never had to worry about viruses! What kind of scumbucket does this kind of thing? What do they get from it? I read the thread about the credit card number being stolen, which is worse than this. Be careful out there!

[Mr. Bloom]

Do you know what the link was? Sounds like others need to be on the lookout

[Grits]

The whole message was:

Dear friend,
Hope you everything goes well. I find a good company to buy electronic products recently.Now it is under sales promotion.They provide the attractive service and price to customers, It is realy a good chance for shopping, you can have a look their web if you like, and you will find more surprising. its website is www.bailecn.com .
Sincerely yours!


I can't believe ANYONE thought I would actually send anything like this!
There is a gov't website to report fraudulent e-mails to, so I am going to send it to them to check out: uec@ftc.gov

[Crankin]

Grits, I have had a Mac for six years and just recently, I got a virus on my IBook. It was a fake link for something, don't remember what, but I could not get rid of it. I downloaded some Norton anti-virus software, which promptly cured it.
I hope this was a one time thing.

[pardes]

I use McAfee, Windows fire wall, AND run CCCleaner every few days and a few sneaky thing still find their way through. So far I've been able to deal with most of them when things start going wonky on the computer but it keeps me on my toes.

[liberty]

I had the EXACT same thing happen to me today. Yahoo account. Same title and message. And it deleted my entire address book. At first I thought I had clicked on some link I shouldn't have... And the interesting thing is this all happened while my account was shut down. I was online but did not have my email open. My dad (my personal computer genius :) ) said someone must have hacked into Yahoo. I will go ahead and change my password too. That'll be a transition, since I've had the same one for 7+ years.

I did a Housecall scan on my computer and it came up with only a few cookies, but nothing wacky. Dad has a pretty stringent firewall set up and does intense, frequent maintenance on the computers; his last maintenance session was just last week. Keep us posted on what Yahoo says happened. My brother also has a Yahoo account, but nothing weird happened to his.

[songlady]

It just happend to my yahoo account this afternoon.

[Grits]

Back up or at least copy your address book, just in case!

[bouncybouncy]

Thank you Thank you Thank you for the heads up!!! I am a yahoo'r...nothing yet on mine but I did change my password to a nice strong one! and backed up my address book...

I never open unknown emails...maybe that helps :rolleyes:

hope you all get your info back and nothing worse...

[maillotpois]

I just got an email from Yellow to my non-Yahoo email address with this message/link. I deleted it - is that enough?

[AuntieK]

I just got an email from Yellow to my non-Yahoo email address with this message/link. I deleted it - is that enough?

Me too! I'll PM Yellow to let her know she should check her computer.:(
I hope deleting it is enough! I copied all my addresses just to be safe.

Thanks for the heads up on this one, Ladies!

[maillotpois]

We already told her.

[SadieKate]

I just called her cell and work phones and left a voice mail message. No answer at home but I think she's actually working on a Monday (probably scoring points for ski season).

[Lifesgreat]

Yellow's computer is a busy little bee. It sent an email to me too.

[sundial]

Yeah, my addresses are toast. :mad:

[SadieKate]

Just received a message from yellow that she's on it.

Apparently, their AM EX card also showed that they traveled through India last month and slept through it all.

Musta happened while she was standing on her head.

[susan.wells]

Happened to me today also! I found myself in my Spam at work when I got there this morning with the same exact email. Checked when I got home and my address book had been deleted as others have reported.

[sundial]

Musta happened while she was standing on her head.

LOL!

[firenze11]

Yikes this is good to know about. My Dad uses a Yahoo account so I'll tell him to be on the lookout for anything strange. And I've now saved my contacts.

[Grits]

It couldn't hurt to change your password if you are on Yahoo. I don't know if that will keep the spammer out for sure, but it's worth a try.

[Kimmyt]

Woah, too weird. This happened to me too, my friend sent me an email saying that a weird email got sent out. Exact same email. And I never open unknown emails or click on links unless I know the sender, so I doubt it happened that way. I'd imagine it's a Yahoo hacker or something. I changed my password to one that's stronger, hopefully everything is ok now.

K.

[yellow]

Luckily, I have this friend that is really good with Excel and she was able to salvage my book for me. I needed to clean out my address book anyway!!! :p

Somewhere there is an antisocial 15 year old giggling and basking in the glow of his/her power of destruction. As I told MP, this is probably the same kid that will be managing my mutual funds in 20 years.

I plot my revenge...bwa ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa

Oh, and by the way, my password WAS strong. Just happened to be one that matched the auto generator, I suppose... a strong password is no guarantee!

[VeloVT]

have any of you that have been affected by this gotten any response from Yahoo yet?






by the way, gmail has a much nicer user interface than yahoo. and the best spam filters I have ever seen...google is way cooler and at least a little less evil than yahoo, imho...

[yellow]

have any of you that have been affected by this gotten any response from Yahoo yet?

by the way, gmail has a much nicer user interface and feature set than yahoo. and the best spam filters I have ever seen...

I haven't, but I suspect they've been inundated. Normally Yahoo is pretty good. I'm not about to change my email address. Once every 10 years is enough. :rolleyes: Thanks for the info, though.

[cherinyc]

Holy crap - this happened to me a couple days ago. I am glad it wasn't from something I did. I salvaged my contacts from the sent email that was SPAM in the first place, then I got a new email address from Google. I've had the same email address with yahoo for 6 years with no problem, now...I also have a MAC and have never had issues like this before.

I emailed yahoo on Saturday when I noticed the wacky email. I got a response today, saying that they got my email. That's it.

This is HUGE and I can't believe that yahoo has not sent anything out to all the yahoo email subscribers, either alerting or explaining the issue to them.

[VeloVT]

I haven't, but I suspect they've been inundated. Normally Yahoo is pretty good. I'm not about to change my email address. Once every 10 years is enough. :rolleyes: Thanks for the info, though.

But you could get a "google hosted account" -- get a domain name, like "yellow.com", then use nifty google apps to have an honest to goodness gmail account with all of the gmail goodness that has an address like "yellow@yellow.com." The last email address you ever need, the best webmail ever, supports pop/imap, and only costs whatever the domain costs, prob $10/year. Pretty slick.

I'll stop proselytizing now :o.

[yellow]

So much for my theory about the 15 year old. Seems it's so easy you can learn how to do it on Blogspot (http://tujuh86.blogspot.com/2005/02/hack-yahoo-email-password-in-7-easy.html)!

Now I'm rethinking all this online banking business.

P.S. No, I did not try to hack anything. But type "email hijack yahoo" into Google and this link is the 3rd hit!

[SadieKate]

Luckily, I have this friend that is really good with Excel and she was able to salvage my book for me. Absolutely brilliant friend, I tell you! I worked and worked to write pages and pages of code. My neck was aching. My eyes were crossing when . . . Eureka! I got it!

Highlight cell > data > text to columns

Me fingers are worn to the bone.

[snapdragen]

One Yahoo account seems OK, I did the Yahoo Plus thing, now I open all my mail in Thunderbird, seems to have an excellent spam filter.
The other Yahoo account-through AT&T has something trying to hit it, but my virus blocker keeps stopping it. It's so cool, when a malicious attack hits, a warning box pops up and a noise like a squealing pig sounds. :rolleyes::D

[SadieKate]

Funny, that's what I sound like when the sales weasels call me.:rolleyes:

[Possegal]

This happened to my hotmail a few months ago. Though it didn't delete the address book. But it sent to several work folks and that was a bit humiliating. :)

[bouncybouncy]

I have had yahoo for years...no issues (knock on wood!) I also backup my address book quite often. I have 2 other email addresses...each one has a "level of trust" with regards to who gets the address. I refuse to get yet another email address...my family would absolutely flip...they gripe everytime I change anything cause they have to go through all their drawers to find instruction books for techy devices so they can change the numbers, names, addresses...etc. hehe:p After a divorce it was necessary...I don't put them through that pain anymore! Now...I just religiously change my password quite often!!! Not bullet proof but it helps...

[newfsmith]

Same thing hit me. Me first clue was that I had an automated reply from PMC when I knew I hadn't e-mailed them. Then my husband asked if I had sent him a link. Address list gone.