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Neko

Monday, June 07, 2010

Inbox hacked, spam emails sent, Sent folder deleted 


(Before anyone asks; no, I have never under any circumstances given my email password to any individual or website or logged into my inbox from other than my bookmarked link.)

This happened to my Yahoo account today; out of the blue, I got a chunk of delivery failure notices that alerted me that, as it turned out, a batch of spam emails had been sent to my contacts from my inbox (a surprising # of which were actually dead addies, which was lucky in this case).

I immediately sent a report to Yahoo, since I don't want them labeling me a spammer, and so that they could de-hack my inbox (foolish hope, as it turns out, since they don't admit to actually doing anything other than suggest you change your password).

I deleted a couple of the "delivery failure notice" emails, then thought better of it, went to the Trash folder, and it was showing emails with dates from 2 years ago in there; I didn't look at them long enough to know what exactly they were, ie if the dates were scrambled or if some actual old emails had been deleted, because I was clicking to get to the next page to try to find the ones I'd just deleted... and then suddenly the Trash folder was empty.

I then noticed that the # next to the link for my Sent file was missing; that folder was also empty. I contacted Yahoo to get my Inbox Restored, but didn't know if the Sent emails could BE returned; a Google search revealed that there's been waves of this exact pattern happening in recent weeks, mostly to Gmail accounts, and Gmail apparently does NOT restore Sent folders, which is grim.

I was lucky; unlike what some people experienced, neither my inbox nor my contacts were deleted (I have backup for the latter, so only time and aggravation would be an issue there, but Yahoo doesn't have a way to backup free email accounts, and there are a TON of business emails as part of my record-keeping in there).

Clearly, the hacker's intention was to send spam and then delete the Sent and Trash folders to cover their tracks. I reset my password and changed the setting about how long to stay logged in, but one day is the lowest choice, and that leaves a great deal of room for mischief if they haven't logged out in order to log into some other Yahoo account... and of course they've demonstrated that password hacking isn't an issue for them in any case.

Then, a couple of hours later, I refreshed my inbox... and every email I'd received today was GONE. I freaked out, assuming that the hacker had returned, seen that bounced-back proof of their activities, and done the deletions; I was filling out another Restore request for Yahoo when it occurred to me to check my alternate email to see if I'd heard from them... and they reported Restoring my inbox to where it had been at 6:30 AM, grrrrrrrrrr. However, my Sent folder was BACK, meaning all the business correspondence that needs to be followed up with is back!! I didn't dare do another Restore, since there was the overwhelming chance that doing so would re-wipe my Sent folder, so I just quit while I was ahead; luckily, I'd had a very light day, and had been keeping on top of what came in, and didn't really lose anything. I had to go to a few websites looking for the info about my accounts that had been sent to me, and send a few emails to people asking them to re-send what I remembered seeing in my inbox, but I THINK I didn't lose anything significant.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





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