Security alert?

[Trog]

Has anyone else had emails with just a hyperlink from someone else on the forum? I've just had two supposedly from Jimbo on my private email account and one from him on the public one. These were also sent to two other forumites, I think, guessing names from email names. Obviously I never click on these hyperlinks and just delete the emails. I've had a few more of these supposedly from beekeepers who have my email address so it could be difficult to find out whose email account has been borrowed by the spammers.

[The Drone Ranger]

No nothing like that Trog thanks for the heads up

[gavin]

Both Jim and me seem to have had our BT accounts hacked yesterday, for which I apologise. Not that I could have done much about it. Folk say that Yahoo (BT use them) has had a spate of this so I don't think it is forum linked.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[EmsE]

I've received some too. Only from forumites though.

Sent from my GT-S6810P using Tapatalk 2

[Jon]

Gav. maybe the problem is with the forum security.
I had e-mails from yourself and Jimbo to my private account and also to an account I used to mail morphometry stuff to Jimbo a while back.

Has anyone got any from my e-mail account which ends j******@fsmail.net ?

Or is it only BT yahoo accounts affected?

[chris]

I had an email from Gavin's personal email adress. It was also apparently sent to a member of Gavin's family at the same time. Considering the site on the link, I thought it was a joke!!
Nothing from you Jon, but then you're rather mean with words. ;-)

[Trog]

Jon, you were a cc on the two I got from Jimbo to my private email address, as was EmsE. I can't remember what the isp was and it's been deleted from the 'trash' folder so I can't check.

[Jon]

Thanks Trog.
I didn't click any of the links in the e-mails I received as the first one ended .ru and that generally indicates spam.
Clicking the link could well start spam from your own e-mail. If anyone starts getting spam from my fsmail.net account please let me know so I can do something about it.

[gavin]

Don't see a forum link tbh. All of my contacts going back several years were spammed. I was first aware when I had a flood of 'Failure to deliver' messages on my phone, people who have changed addresses. That can only come from hacking into my BT account and that password is different from the one for the forum. There were no traces in my Sent Mail. The hacker used BitterNet, an ISP in the Ukraine. Apparently.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[Trog]

Spam emails last week were from other beekeeping contacts. I think some get filtered out by webmail before they reach my inbox.

[GRIZZLY]

I had one yesterday from Gavin. Total cobblers b----y hackers.

[Jimbo]

Sorry folks,

I got a spam e-mail from Gavin last night but did not open the link and just deleted it. Then all hell broke loose and spam e-mails were sent to all the people on my contact list or had e-mails from in the past from. I have changed all my security settings and passwords so hopefully that should stop it.

Jimbo

[Neils]

As a general piece of advice, knowing that password reuse is very common and that incredibly in this day and age some websites still store password information unencrypted, make sure that the password to your email account is different to the one(s) you use to log in to websites.

I recently had an admin of another site confirm to me he knew what my password was which means when they get hacked the hacker will get a list of a few thousand email addresses and passwords, about 60-75% of which if you believe the studies would get them access to that mail account.

Gmail users should enable the two factor login process. This gives you a specific password for each device (PC, iPad, phone etc) that are yours but requires a second password that can be text to you if you need to login from elsewhere.

I.e if I, or anyone else, tries to access my email account from a computer other than mine with my standard password I'll get a text asking me to enter a second password to validate that it's me.

[Trog]

Is it true that the spammers can get in even if you don't click on the link? I can understand if the email was opened using a mail program that this might trigger something but thought webmail-based email was safer.

[fatshark]

I followed the link ... very interesting and useful. My new Russian bride will be arriving at the weekend. I'll hide her in the same place I keep all the flat-packed brood boxes and supers.

[Neils]

Is it true that the spammers can get in even if you don't click on the link? I can understand if the email was opened using a mail program that this might trigger something but thought webmail-based email was safer.

Trog, the short answer is that it depends.

I would personally rather trust my mail client than any web browser to maintain the security of my account/password. I would definitely recommend that anyone who did click on the link run a full a scan as possible using their virus/malware utility of choice.

If you're running a legit copy of windows from XP onwards, Microsoft security essentials is as good as any and is free.

[The Drone Ranger]

Try Linux as your operating system :)