Spam email from "myself" ?

F

firehawk

Veteran
Received an email that looks like it came from my own business email box, subject title is my first name in lower caps.
The email basically reads in broken english that my account was hacked when I went to some porn site and they have video of me watching videos and will share to all my contacts if I do not pay them $1000 bitcoin. Well I haven't been watching any such thing but what concerns me is how it appears to be sent from my email account. Maybe they could spam email my clients and make it look like I said it. I use a godaddy account. Attached to the email was a .jpeg that I didn't open.
The text of the email itself resembled an image as in I couldn't cursor highlight it like normal text in an email.

I also looked at how my emails inbox looks when I do email myself and they show my business name in the sender and not my email address so something is up there?

I am also running virus protection. Any ideas?
 
It's possible they actually have your password and hacked your email acount (not just a masked email). It's a common phishing spam and they obtain passwords from sites that have had large breaches in user accounts. It's always a good idea to change your passwords, have an active antivirus installed, and use a VPN when possible. Also balance your checkbook/bank acount on a regular basis. Aside for that, don't respond, don't worry too much about those type of emails and never pay a randsom/blackmail.
 
I get them every few days. Some repeater over and over. Faking an email address is a piece of cake for these idiots. I even got one that said it came from me, sent to another email account I use as If I had sent it to myself. In my van I have a network radio which lets me talk to the rest of the guys no matter where we are. Runs on a data sim, and has phone number (not that I know what it is)
and I get texts and even phone calls to a number that nobody should have. Trawling the net grabbing email addresses is so simple as your email is attached to so much nowadays. Just forget about it.

On a forum I manage, we had an attack that used a vulnerability in the software - new members needed manual approval, but a new member could send PMs, even if not validated - we have 90,000 users who got a PM from a pretty brunette offering all sorts of things. The majority simply deleted them, but a few really kicked off, demanding removal, assurances and really upset. Seems that somebody found the vulnerability and spread it around. We applied the patch to stop it but now every few days we get an access attempt now. Just how it is, I guess.
 
firehawk said:
Received an email that looks like it came from my own business email box, subject title is my first name in lower caps.
The email basically reads in broken english that my account was hacked when I went to some porn site and they have video of me watching videos and will share to all my contacts if I do not pay them $1000 bitcoin. Well I haven't been watching any such thing but what concerns me is how it appears to be sent from my email account. Maybe they could spam email my clients and make it look like I said it. I use a godaddy account. Attached to the email was a .jpeg that I didn't open.
The text of the email itself resembled an image as in I couldn't cursor highlight it like normal text in an email.

I also looked at how my emails inbox looks when I do email myself and they show my business name in the sender and not my email address so something is up there?

I am also running virus protection. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've gotten this too and they are almost certainly spoofing your email. They just send out a few million of these hoping for a sucker. I suspect the jpeg you saw as an attachment was the actual message you read since a text email would be easier for your spam filters to detect. That's why you couldn't select the text. If you message is similar to the one I got you'll also notice some of the spaces are missing between words to confuse attempts to use OCR.

I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Agreed; ignore it.

You become a real believer in security after it happens to you. I was hit with ransomware when I stupidly downloaded a format converter without fully vetting it. The computer really was locked up. They encrypted every file on my drives. They wanted bitcoin. Fortunately, I had everything backed up offline.

These parasites are clever.
 
Glad its not just me! :D I get bombarded with variations on the:
"you have a very interesting taste in porno, your family and friends will be very surprised unless you hand over $1000 in bitcoin"
all coming from my own account, they often also show a password I used to use and inform me my account is hacked/taken over.
Nothing to worry about, I think they got my password (since updated!) from an Instagram security breach a year or so ago.
 
Thanks everyone. I appreciate the help. Grateful to see some of you really intelligent members here chiming in.
I actually laughed at the part saying I was watching porn so I knew that part was was fake. But I realize emails/logins can get breached so I didn't want there to be a real problem. Guess it's time to change my passwords again anyway.

Since this happened I realized such a scam might work on a husband who was visiting such sites. Then the stress would come..I've been caught. I don't want my wife and kids to find out, and might actually pay.

On a related note, on my list of things to do is implement a captcha on my contact info form page. I get about a dozen or more computer generated fake form submissions from a bunch of made up names with poor english or other languages.
It's interesting because they are usually either about how to get rich fast or get sex. Ahhh... depravity. One time it was some alleged young person wanting to know where to spend his money.
 
firehawk said:
On a related note, on my list of things to do is implement a captcha on my contact info form page. I get about a dozen or more computer generated fake form submissions from a bunch of made up names with poor english or other languages.
It's interesting because they are usually either about how to get rich fast or get sex. Ahhh... depravity. One time it was some alleged young person wanting to know where to spend his money.
Click to expand...

Yup, that will help. Also make sure that if you have your email listed anywhere on the site, you should have it posted as an image, not a text or clickable link. Also check your domain name registration to see if it is private or not, the jerks regularly go through any name they can find and look to see if your email is available through the registration.
 
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