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Beware the email hackers
24.09.08
Story: Inishowen Independent
A LOCAL woman whose email account was hacked into at
the weekend has warned people in Inishowen to ensure
their email passwords are secure and include a
series of numbers and letters.
The north Inishowen woman who did not wish to be
named, told the Inishowen Independent that the
discrepancy came to light at the weekend when
members of her family received an email from her
seeking financial help.
“The email suggested that I was at a conference in
Nigeria and had been stranded without money and it
asked those who received it to send me on over
$1,600 to help cover costs,” the woman said
yesterday. |
However she explained
that because the email had been received by members
of her family, she was able to have the matter
rectified fairly quickly.
“The people who hacked into my g-mail account were
able to send emails out to everyone in my address
book, but thankfully I was able to get the |
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password changed and
fix the problem right away.”
The local woman says she is aware of another woman
whose email account was hacked into recently and she
urged members of the public to make sure they have a
secure password.
“If your password is just a word then you really
should change it and ensure that there are some
numbers in it too because that will make it much
more difficult to break into,” she said.
She also urged anyone receiving such emails to make
sure they are genuine before they would consider
responding.
“The language used in this email was pretty poor and
most people probably realised quickly enough that it
was suspect, but still a number of people did call
me to check if it was genuine. That was good because
I do know that some of the other emails are more
believable and it is always better to check,” she
said.
The local woman added that she had since contacted
those in her address book to warn them that her
account had been hacked, but has now been rectified. |
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