URGENT MESSAGE FOR GEORGE47

[montesquieu]

I just sent a PM to George after some very strange email exchanges. His account may have been hacked, perhaps worth others on his PM list look out for this. If anyone has his mobile please ping him to let him know - I suspect his email may be compromised.

 

[Chivas]

Yup, same here. I'm getting strange emails from him to buy him Amazon gift cards for a friend's sick daughter. Strong scammer scent to it

 

[Tony_J]

Yep - I think he has been hacked.

 

[rabski]

Had

Yup, same here. I'm getting strange emails from him to buy him Amazon gift cards for a friend's sick daughter. Strong scammer scent to it

I got the mail as well.

I think 'strong scammer scent' is somewhat of an understatement

 

[Tony_J]

Had


I got the mail as well.

I think 'strong scammer scent' is somewhat of an understatement

Definite strong scent of something...💩

 

[BarneysDad2]

Same here.
If you're a moderator or former mod theres a strong chance you'll get one.
Starts off asking if "you're online at the moment"

Consigned it to junk & ran full anti virus check myself.

 

[Tip1]

There is a lot of this going around at the moment.

I recommend that people use a password manager with unique passwords and 2FA on every account if possible.

 

[rabski]

I assume it's his email account that's been attacked, not his account here. It's not just mods.

 

[BarneysDad2]

I assume it's his email account that's been attacked, not his account here. It's not just mods.

Not just mods, looks like his email account.
Danny's tried his phone without success.
Looks like he may still be unaware.

 

[rabski]

Looks like he may still be unaware.

Oh, the temptation

 

[bigfool1956]

I feel left out 🤔

 

[rabski]

I feel left out 🤔

PM me your account number, post code, mother's maiden name and what your first pet was called and I will make you feel included

 

[Chumpchops]

I am a Nigerian Prince and I claim my £5

 

[2010*zuma]

I was sent a birthday card and some money by George47 last week, what a real nice surprise and gesture.

Any other warmers wishing to follow suit with Xmas coming up feel yourselves free of any walnuts or terrys chocolate orange for my impending Xmas stocking fund 🎁

 

[meninblack]

I have had the same - wanted my to buy gift vouchers on his behalf. Good job I looked in here!!

 

[bigfool1956]

Turns out gmail had already worked out that George is a serial spammer and plonked him in the spam folder 🤣

I guess I'm going to have to keep checking there in the future in case useful emails from him end up there 🙄

 

[George 47]

Yes my BT account was hacked. They got access to my contacts (300 of them) and then proceeded to send them a Spam e-mail. It was headed Favor and asked people to respond. The response was to a fake account with my name and a spelling mistake, on a gmail account. I do not have such an account. It was a poor attempt and so far no one has fallen foul of the attempt.

I have had tons of phone calls with people letting me know, audio companies, business associates in Japan, USA and Spain and a lot of audio companies who immediately recognised spam.

I do not know how they got my password . Anyway machine virus checked, new hard password from a random password generator, a more elaborate virus/on-line checker, 2FTA and a few other additions. I am also changing all my passwords and remain thankful that all my finance details are on a piece of paper only.

So apologies to those impacted and I am still concerned that they will return. And time to delete any e-mail addresses no longer needed. May close this BT account just in case.

 

[Amormusic]

This is a useful website for folks.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/
Let's you know if your email or phone number has ever been in a data breach.

You can then get busy changing passwords etc.

 

[George 47]

Just to cheer you up:

 

[Jules_S]

That's valid until quantum computing hits the real world. Then we'll all be trying to remember 20,000-character passwords to stop the damned things being cracked in milliseconds 😮

As a slight aside (but sort-of related) keep a watch out for a new phishing scam hitting your inbox, purporting to be about "your new Post Office travel insurance policy". I got one today and for once it was pretty convincing. Presumably the scammers had taken the content of a genuine email and modified it. Even the link URLs seemed to point to the genuine website so presumably some sort of spoofing going on. The only giveaways were that they sent it to an email address that I never use (with strange capitalisation, which was another weird thing) and that they spelt my name incorrectly in the "Dear x" bit right at the beginning. I did even call the post office to check in case some thieving scumbag had pinched my details from somewhere and actually tried ordering insurance for their luxury holiday, but it turns out not.

Be careful, folks.