Bogus emails

[RoninPA]

To my Ruger friends, my email account was hacked this past weekend. I have fixed the problem but you might still get an email from "me" (rlutz730...). Be assured, I WILL NEVER email someone and ask for anything. I will not ask if you have an Amazon account, nor will I ever ask you for money, gift cards,etc. for anyone.

If you get one of these emails, delete it without ever replying. I have had some great friends and customers who have alerted me to this event and I have posted on facebook and other places to explain.

Thank you for understanding. If you haqve any questions, just PM me.

 

[Kevin]

How did you find out your email was hacked?

 

[hittman]

Oops …. I got one and told you that I do not have an Amazon account.

No worries …. It happens.

 

[RoninPA]

Kevin,
I noticed very quickly that I was getting next to no emails where I normally get upwards to 70 per day (mainly because of my business). Also, when I was in the hotel Friday night while at the East Coast Gathering, when I used the hotels wifi I noticed something odd and tried to back out and thought I did but it apparently was pretty well done and someone got my info. The next night I used my personal hotspot to log in and saw the lack of emails. Then when we got home Sunday evening it was the same, no emails. Also, had a lot of phone messages from my friends and customers saying they got a strange email from me and it didn't seem like it would be one that I would send out (asking about the Amazon acct, etc.) Monday morning I contacted Xfinity/Comcast and was on the phone for about 1 1/2 hours checking things out, changing passwords, etc. Then we found, deep in my Email Filters section (where you can set up filters to automatically delet spam) there was one again cleverly done and hard to see. The scammer was redirecting all my emails to a different account. That got deleted and within an hour I had 15 emails come through so I knew that got fixed.

However, later that day I found he copied ALL of my address book, that's where he got everyones email address, but he could not leave good enough alone. Now pardon my lamguage, but the Rosie O'Donnel then deleted all of them from my account after he stole them so I don't have them anymore and will have to rebuild over time unless I can find some way to retrieve them if they are somewhere in Comcasts system. I'll probably have to get back in touch with Comcast to see if they can help me.

Everything seems to be back to suome what normal.

 

[Kevin]

Wow! I wonder who did it. The hackers are getting more intelligent and harder to find.

Just yesterday on the news, the Allen, Texas school district had their whole computer system hacked. The hackers wanted money or they would release personal information about the students enrolled. The hackers sent out an email to all the parents, who then called the school for more information. I didn’t catch all the details, but I guess the school district is not going to pay (good for them). The school district is just going to call their bluff and see if they do release any information.

 

[RoninPA]

Thank you to the admin who changed my bad language faux pas , I should have known better but I was a bit upset.

 

[hittman]

Email sent so you’ll have my email address again.

 

[RoninPA]

Thank you, I got it fine.

 

[George]

Ron, I'm sure others can address this better than I. But anyway I was hacked about eight months ago and every time I thought it was fixed a couple months later I seen I was hacked again it didn't matter how many passwords or usernames I changed. Through my hunting and fishing on the internet I found something that might be interesting to you that works for me. I would have never known this. On my server getting into my email that way I went to settings, then filters. In all my accounts in filters in my 1 account I seen a whole bunch of weird stuff that was not in any of my other accounts in the filters this was directing all my email and information 2 the hackers account and not deleting it from my server so I had no way of knowing this was still happening even though I changed my username and passwords in my account. So just a suggestion you May want 2 look for settings and filters under your server in your email compare them if you have more than one account and if one has a whole bunch of different stuff in it look at it carefully. You will want to address those changes and delete them! I can't explain it better than this but I'm sure someone else can. Hope this is of use to you, or others! Best of luck! George

 

[RoninPA]

George,
Thanks for that info. I have a lot of filters set up for spam, etc. and I/we found the one that the hacker/s put into my filters. The way it was done was pretty darn hard to find but between me and the Comcast person I was on the phone with we found it. The hacker was forwarding all my emails to his account. Well, that got deleted and the next day I had my typical number of emails and have since then. Also, Comcast has that scammers email address now and the Comcast security people said they would take it from there. Also, Comcast was able to retrieve all the emails that had been forwarded to him/them and sent them to me so I could review them and save the ones that were important to me.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary has cropped up since the fixes that were done by me and Comcast.

I detest these people who do this, but I guess in this day and computer age, crooks will do what crooks will do, low tech or high tech.

 

[blammer]

Especially on the road, consider using VPN (Virtual Private Network) software. I use PIA's software and it has worked well (at least I haven't been hacked). It encrypts traffic in addition to running traffic through a different IP (their server).

WARNING: The problem with VPN's is that a growing number of sites don't work when using the PIA. Sometimes it's because they detect the traffic from the VPN's server IP, sometimes I think it's because web sites have figured out that it's costing the site information and tracking by IP.

Edit: another way to protect yourself on the road is to set up a hotspot via a cell phone provider's hardware or even your cell phone. Can be expensive and maybe slower, but should be a little less exposed and harder to mess with.

 

[RoninPA]

blammer,
Good points, I had never had any problems in the past at the hotels I've stayed at but this was the one. I do carry a personal portable hotspot and it works great but I typicaqlly only used it when I couldn't connect any other way or was very suspicious of what I say when looking at the hotel networks. Looks like I be using it more from now on.

 

[Armybrat]

I wish there was an app we could use to track down those scumbag hackers’ physical location, identify them publicly, raid their bank accounts, then detonate their cellphone battery next to their ear when they answer a call spoofing their bff’s number.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

From the Classified section's rules . . .

We have noted instances where bad results have occurred when an email address is posted openly in an advertisement. Scammers abound. We recommend that all initial contacts between sellers and buyers be made via the PM system where email addresses can be exchanged securely.