on 28-10-2024 15:24
Anyone received one of these hacker emails lately
Just trying to see how many virgin customers this has happened to
Answered! Go to Answer
on 28-10-2024 16:17
Thanks Coenoby, much appreciated
on 28-10-2024 16:32
Understood. It just looked rather alarming, I hope your account hasn't actually been hacked.
on 28-10-2024 18:13
@Jpeg1 I'm hoping a staff member can shed more light on the situation, luckily, I had 2 step authentication on all my external accounts (didn't stop them trying though) facebook account was disabled by facebook due to numerous attempts to get into it without success due to 2 step auth so that's gone but I haven't used Facebook for a long time anyway.
That happened on Saturday, today I've had things changed in my Virgin account so need help from staff to check it out for me
on 29-10-2024 18:51
31-10-2024 11:58 - edited 31-10-2024 12:17
Disabled accounts-
I had hacking attempts to login to my facebook and instagram recently and they were both disabled, it kept happening so I took the drastic step and deleted the accounts and then opened new ones with new emails and phone numbers which has stopped the hacking attempts, some emails also had hacking attempts and attempt to hack linkedin so I changed my login credentials.
If you permit the accounts to recognise your device that can make access easier which I now do with social media.
They did not get in as I use 2FA, but caused me problems and had to make changes to my emails as well.
The fake trojan email in the original post is a common extorsion scam, I have had many, but best to update the security and use strong passwords.
My most recent scam email is a payout/gift from Elon Musk.
Note that some accounts allow a phone number to be used for login purposes as well as the email or user name, so that can also get picked up by hackers who can then use the phone number to attempt to login to an email or social media. Scam phone text messages or unknown phone calls can also be linked to hacking attempts, so the hackers/scammers may know my phone numbers also and ask for your name and other data.
Hacking can go back many years and breached data on the dark web can provide hackers with passwords or they just may make a lucky guess at a password. I had some older emails hacked in the distance past before Virgin when it was NTL and the hacker compromised several emails which I could not recover at the time. I had used my wife's name as a password on an email which was hacked and then a second one hacked. I did some checks on my old emails and there were indications the the hacker used fake names but was done by somebody known to me so that may have had made the hacking easier.
Once the hacker has your data stored from emails/contact they then send emails from known contacts for phishing.
In some cases I has emails set up in my name but by somebody else, and used to send emails to myself.
If an email is compromised then it is best to stop using it as a main email it and open a new main email with gmail or outlook or yahoo for example.