E-mail scammer hijacked my old e-mail address

[gokuDX7 2,871]

Now this is more funny then a Rant and Rave / Issue. Ok before I get to the story i'm going to back track a bit. My Internet Service Provider (ISP) used to be Adelphia but they got acquired by Comcast last summer here in my town. So this led to me and my dad having to change our adelphia e-mails to comcast ones. Needless to say this process was a bitch since we both used our adelphia accounts for allot of things. Comcast verified that all mail sent to our old accounts would be forwarded to us...so I guess it wasn't so bad. The process of switch went smooth and that was that.

Now fast forward to last monday. Its been a long time since we transfered e-mail addresses and I still receive my adelphia mail without problems. Normally 20 e-mails or less a day. However today was very different, I was shocked to find 740 e-mails waiting for me. Most of them being errors sent to me, you know, the errors you get when you send an e-mail to someone but their ISP can't receive it or the e-mail account isn't real. Well I was shocked since I definitely had not e-mailed 740 people in one day and looking at the addresses it was clear I had no clue who these people where that I was supposed to be e-mailing. So I noticed I had 75 e-mails marked as spam from my spam protection software (Spamihilator). I opened up the program and noticed all the spam had the same subject "REF: OYL /26510460037/07". I then viewed the e-mail and to my surprise I was confronted with peoples personal info.

1.FULL NAMES

2.ADDRESS

3.SEX

4.AGE

5.MARITAL STATUS

6.OCCUPATION

7.TELEPHONE NUMBER

8.COUNTRY

I was a bit confused since it was clearly not spam and 70+ people send me this. I then assumed that my comcast e-mail was compromised (hacked) so I went to their site attempted to change my password but could not since their change password page was "down". after 10 mins in their help chat one of their service staff reset my password and notified the server crew that the change password page was down. However when I went to check my mail again I had received 54 more e-mails from people giving me their person info.

This time I checked the e-mail header info. It showed that the e-mails where not sent from my comcast address but with my adelphia one. So I rushed off to adelphia.net and changed my default password that adelphia was using on my account to something different (I don't know why they changed my password to "password" in the first place, I suppose I should have changed it after they did it ). After checking mail I noticed the error e-mails stopped coming in, however people that had already received the e-mail from the scammer are still sending me their person info. Today I got another 50 .

Lessons learned:

1) Not all people that send you scam e-mails are real scammers, some are just hijacked e-mail accounts that are either not used anymore or people used simple passwords.

2) People are stupid - looking at some of the personal info (ie. the age) people around 35 start falling for this shit. So far the age range is from 35-65. However I did receive allot of e-mail from people yelling at me and calling me names....I wish they knew I was not the scammer .

3) Scammers are stupid too - he hijacked my account but didn't change my password...did he want me to find out and stop him/her?

4) Always change your password from anything commonly used (password, god, sex, aaaaaa, ...etc) even if you no longer use the e-mail account.

[Vincent 2,861]

wow, that's really scary. you have all that personal information....i wonder what the original email sent out said for so many people to just cough up their info like that

[gokuDX7 2,871]

I saved a copy just in case adelphia contacted.

> EURO MILLIONS INTERNATIONAL

> 175 WOODHILL ROAD, BULKYARD,

> LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

> THE AWARD DEPARTMENT.

> REF: OYL /26510460037/07

> BATCH: 24/00319/IPD

>

>

>

> CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE WON,

>

>

>

> WE ARE PLEASED TO INFORM YOU OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY OF YOUR

> SELECTION

> AS ONE OF THE LUCKY WINNERS OF THE EURO MILLIONS LOTTERY SWEEPSTAKES

> HELD ON THE 16TH OF JUNE,YOU ARE THEREFORE ENTITLED TO RECEIVE A LUMP

> SUM

> PAY OUT OF FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED KINGDOM POUNDS ( £500.000.00)

>

> NOTE .THAT NO TICKET WAS SOLD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WAS SELECTED FROM OUR

> DATA BASE

> THROUGH A RANDOM SELECTION OF OVER 20,000.00 EMAILL ADDRESSES BY OUR

> JAVA SOFT WARE

> THAT SELECTS EMAIL ADDRESSES DATA BASE.

>

> FOR YOUR PRIZE COLLECTION YOU ARE TO FORWARD THE FOLLOWING DETAILS TO

> INTER-WORLD FORWARDING SERVICE FOR THE TRANSFER OF YOUR WINNINGS.

>

>

>

>

> MR Charles Davidson

> EMAIL: worldforwardingservice@yahoo.co.uk

>

>

>

> 1.FULL NAMES

> 2.ADDRESS

> 3.SEX

> 4.AGE

> 5.MARITAL STATUS

> 6.OCCUPATION

> 7.TELEPHONE NUMBER

> 8.COUNTRY

>

>

>

> SINCERELY,

> TESSY ANDERSON

>

>

[Mathias 426]

Something like this (man you can get in trouble easy) I'm a lonely red-headed 17 year old girl who's cocker spaniel was just run over. I need $200 to pay for his surgery and would be willing to do ANYTHING for my little puppy. If you can think of anything I could DO to earn some money from you I'd be most appreciative. Please send me your personal info to the following email address so I can meet with you in person.

[Mibu_Kyoshiro 886]

I'd call all those people and tell them how stupid they all are to send anyone their private info.

[Pchan 5,162]

Or play along X'D.