Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Nigerian Scammers Hack Into Business Insider/Clusterstock Gmail Account

Henry Blodget and Dan Frommer have issued an alert:
On Monday, a hacker took control of our company's general Gmail account and sent a scam email to at least several dozen people who have corresponded with us at alleyinsider@gmail.com.

We got control of the account back quickly, but not without a fight and not before at least the one scam email went out.

First, we want to apologize to anyone who received an email ostensibly from us entitled "My Predicament" that recited a bogus sob story about getting mugged. ("Send money immediately...") Needless to say, we didn't send this email.
Blodgett and Frommer go into quite a bit of detail as to what they did to regain control of their email account and the counter-measures the hackers put in place.

They also go into detail on how the account was taken over.

In short, if you conduct any important business by email, their article is a must read. It will help understand how to defeat the scammers if they ever takeover your account, and also may prompt you to take a few measures to better protect your passwords.

The full story is here.

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