Hacker rigs Senator’s email account to scam
Photo by: Akeg
A fraudster is using State Senator Pat Wiggins’ Hotmail email account to run a scam. Last month, the fraudster hacked into her account and is now sending emails to her contacts requesting them to lend her some money.
The fraudster, pretending to be the Senator, is sending out emails claiming that she has been waylaid while on a trip to England. She misplaced her wallet there and now is without the means to either clear her hotel bills or to buy a ticket home. The email asks her contacts to lend her $2,500 to help her come back home.
Eventually, it was one of her friends who caught the scam. Longtime friend, Donna Freeman felt something fishy even as she went through the mail. She thought the words and phrases just did not belong to the Senator.
Now, the Senator is warning all her friends about the scam as she does not have a clue as to who all may have been contacted. After breaking into her account, the fraudster changed the password to deny her access to it. This would put most people involved in email correspondence with her, at risk.
Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, was contacted for help. On their part, they suspended the hijacked account and also traced out the fraudster to Africa.
Commonly, access codes to email accounts are not held as fastidiously as codes to other online accounts like net-banking and credit accounts. However, this could prove costly for account holders, as email phishing scams have shown many times before. Once hacked, all the correspondence, including financial ones, can be easily accessed by online criminals.
Source: PressDemocrat.com
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March 5th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
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