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Jewish World Review June 11, 2010 / 29 Sivan, 5770 E-mail violators strike quickly By Mark Kellner
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It started — so far as I can tell — at about 6 a.m. Monday. Someone, using an Internet gateway somewhere in the People's Republic of China, tried to access my Gmail e-mail account, one of the presumably millions of such accounts hosted by Google, the Internet search and services giant.
Four hours later, they gained, somehow, access to that e-mail account, and started to blitz the addresses listed in my e-mail address book.
"Dear friend," the e-mail began. "How are you doing now? I bought a notebook from the website last week [LINK DELETED]. I have received the product in time.
"Not only its quality is very good, but also its price is very low," the e-mail continued in rather spotty English. "They also sell phone, TV, handheld game player, motorcycle and musical instruments.
"They import products from USA, Japan and South Korea, and they import the bestsellers. They have a good reputation, and offer the good suggest to the customers for the purchasing.
"If you want to buy any product, it is the good choice to browse the website. It is conviced that you will get benefits and joys.
"Greetings!"
I found out about this when several dozen e-mail attempts bounced back. I also had a few kind friends inquire as to whether my account had been "hacked," and one annoyed person say I had no reason to retain their contact information. Sorry about that!
After answering and assuaging those who needed either or both, I got to work. One friend wisely suggested I change my Gmail password. I did, and it's much "stronger," or harder to figure out, than the simple one-word password I'd used before. (Memo to other hackers: I've changed the passwords on all my web-based e-mail accounts.)
Turns out I'm not the only one, and it also seems that Gmail isn't the only service under attack. In the past week or so, two friends using other services — one was Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail — were similarly hacked, with e-mails going out claiming they were stuck overseas and needed money to get home, and would I please wire some cash.
I knew those were scam e-mails, and I hope those people who received the blast message sent under my name would know that I would not recommend a shopping website no one has heard of, and most certainly not with such lousy grammar and syntax!
Google is on top of the situation, however. On March 24, Pavni Diwanji, Gmail's engineering director, posted a note to the Gmail blog (http://bit.ly/aCnMNA) about a service the firm is offering that detects suspicious activity on your account. If you happen to be traveling and are logging in from somewhere in China, that's one thing. But if you logged in from the U.S. at 7 a.m. and your account was logged on to at 10 a.m. from somewhere 5,000 miles away, that's suspicious, and Google will let you know.
What else can you do? Well, you can do something I've been loath to do for quite some time: deploy "strong" passwords with upper- and lowercase letters, numerals and symbols. No more easy stuff that someone can sniff out or guess at somehow. And, you can change those passwords every three to six months. It's a pain, but it's also a good means of protection.
You can also make sure your computer is free of malware and other "spying" programs: on my office and home Macs, I've run MacScan, a $30 program that finds stuff that shouldn't be on your Mac and eliminates it. On my home system, it found about 150 "cookies" which tracked activity and may have done other bad things. They're gone now.
Above all, be vigilant. Folks will try to take advantage of you with spam offers, e-mails claiming to offer "hot" videos of Megan Fox, or free music downloads. The links in such e-mails, especially if the come from someone you don't know, are invitations to computer invasions and e-mail hacking. Just say no: a Bobby Vinton MP3 mix isn't worth the risk.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here. © 2009, News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
