WARNING
 

During the last 24 hours my email account was hacked and a very large number of people have been sent an email to the effect that I am in Manilla and desperately need money.

This is spam.

I am not in Manilla, I have not been mugged, I am in Australia and hope to be in Indonesia in a couple of days time.

Any Forum members who have been subjected to this scam have my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Good to hear that you were not in any sort of trouble, Alan!

Came here to send a message that you may have been hacked but I see that you caught it already. Cool. We should all be appreciative of yet another service our forum provides us!

Hi Alan,
received the spam message, and, since I once in Bruxelles suffered the same adventure depicted in that mail, I believed the story was true and offered my help. Of course that message has been sent to all addresses present in your mailing list.
It would be advisable you send another message to all your contacts warning them of the trick.
Last but not least, I am happy that you and your family are safe at home.
Giovanni

Alan,
Should you be interested in having the address of the spammer, here it is:

1121 MH del Pilar Street
Ermita Manila City 1000 Metro Manila
Philippines

He asked me to send US$ 1450.00
Of course the name is yours.
Best regards and have a nice stay in Indonesia
Giovanni

Thank you very much for the warning. I just get a call of a friend collector who get as well this mail but who isn't active at the forum but want to ask me if I know more and want to help "you" by sending money by WU.

I wish you a good journey to Indonesia, selamat jalan!

Detlef

I'd have to hear your voice mate, before I sent you anything ... ;)

I WILL NOT GO INTO WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE SCAM MESSAGE AS IT MIGHT SERVE THOSE WHO SEND SUCH SCAMS TO CORRECT MISTAKES. BUT I WILL SAY THOSE OF US WHO TRAVEL ON OUR OWN ARE A SELF SUFFICENT LOT.

ONLY A CLOSE BLOOD RELATIVE OR FRIEND AS CLOSE AS A BROTHER MIGHT GET A MESSAGE ASKING FOR MONEY FROM ME IF THERE WAS AN EMERGENCY. ALL POSSIBLE ARANGEMENTS AND MY SCHEDULES ARE KNOWN TO FAMILY BEFORE DEPARTURE.
MY RULE IS NEVER TAKE ANYTHING ON A TRIP YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE OR THAT CANNOT BE REPLACED AND HAVE MULTIPLE BACKUP FOR ALL NECESSARY THINGS. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE IS I TAKE ME AND SOMETIMES FAMILY.

Anyway ...
 

All's well that ends well .
Hopefully no one got scammed and we can move on .

G'day Alan,

Is it safe for us to email you using that email address now? i.e you are not locked out from that email?

Rasdan

Yes Rasdan, that email address is now OK.

I guess its possible to break into virtually anything if you really want to, but my address now has a new password that was set up in accordance with government security protocols. Hopefully its a little bit safer than my previous one.

I have been told that deletion of an unwanted email can result in a hacker gaining entry to an account, and perhaps that is how it was hacked in the first place.

Alan,

Good to hear your oke :)

But, were is the source of what you posted last, that a unwanted email removed gets your account hacked :confused:

It's new to me.

Kind regards from Amsterdam

Yeah, it was new to me too.

After my problem hit I discussed it with a friend whose brother works for yahoo. His advice was that some of these junk or phishing emails can infect your account if you delete them so it is better just to ignore them. He told me this advice is part of the standard yahoo advice n dealing with this problem. When I checked the yahoo page on this problem I found that it says the same thing:- ignore, do not delete.