This is the text of an email message I'm sending out which I thought I'd also post here:
Yesterday morning you may have received an email from “bharshaw at hotmail.com” with no subject
which contained a url, probably ending in “176.xxx” where the “xxx” is a file
type, usually an image one but not always. There was also a post on my
facelessbureaucrat blog. I’m still not sure what happened but it appears my
hotmail and possibly google passwords were hacked and someone used my email
account to spam you. As far as I know now the url did not contain a virus (my
wife got one, which she opened, but full scans of my PC using McAfee didn’t
reveal any virus. But since I’m no expert:
- if you did click on the url and open it, please be sure your security
software is running and up-to-date. Let me know if you have any problems.
- if you didn’t click on it, delete the message and congratulate yourself on
following the prime rule for email safety: never open an unexpected url or
attachment. Check first.
I’m now changing my passwords, following the experience of James Fallows
after his wife’s account was hacked (see his
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/ –but
don’t click on that—go to the Atlantic website and search for “Fallows password”
to see the sequence of posts he put up. Long story short, he went to Lastpass,
which is a free password manager and permits you to have strong passwords for
individual accounts.
My apologies for endangering your security.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment