NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, March 2011
President' Corner
by Wes Eckles, President
alert@ieee.org
(click to email author)

Did you miss the February 19th Q & A? Tom Black, Art Hughes, and Robert Davis did a excellent job of fielding questions.

How Can They Hijack Your Email Account and Address?
The answer is "many ways". All you can do is take precautions and hope for the best. Here is an recent experience. I receive a call warning me that I should not read any Email from him. His Email account had been highjacked and someone was using his mail list to send messages. Sure enough, when I checked my Email I found two Emails with his name in the From: space. I deleted them. He abandoned the Email at yahoo that he had used for many years and changed to a different provider. Of course he had to spend hours notifying his contacts of the change. I am still receiving the bogus emails with a cryptic message in it. It listed a link to click on. I deleted the email.

Email hijacking is when a hacker breaks into an email account and uses it to send spam or access private data. Email security goes beyond just having a strong password. A.C. Kooser, an eHow contributor, suggests these steps that may prevent hijacking of Email accounts:

1. Choose a strong password. Use at least eight upper and lower case letters and numbers and symbols. Don't use any words or phrases that can be found in a dictionary.
2. Keep your anti-malware utilities up to date.
3. Consider maintaining more than one email account. You could have one for your private and personal account and a public one for signing up for online services or filling in online forms that require an email address.
4. Don't give out your email address or password. Any person or web site that asks for your email password is most likely not legitimate.

An eHow contributor gives these tips for hiding your email address when posting to public forums:

1. When you are posting a blog, comment or any other public post, do not use your email address unless absolutely necessary.
2. Use a clever variation. Instead of Me@mymail.com use "me at mymail dot com". Automatic scanners that hackers use won't pick this up as a valid email address.

You lessen the chance of your account being hijacked by limiting the broadcast of your email address. I have written about this subject before and think it is worth repeating. The way you send your email to a bunch of people or forward messages you received can broadcast the lists to a PC that is infected with malware. The hacker obtains email address lists this way. They then go to work trying to get passwords to accounts. It seems that I get email every day with a list of email address in the "To:" space or the "cc:" space. The addresses are there, easy to copy. People forward stuff that has been forwarded multiple times with a list of email address for each forwarding. This is broadcasting email address to the world. Here are my rules for sending emails to a list of people.

1. Put your email address in the "To:" space.
2. Put the list of email addresses in the "Bcc" space (Blind carbon copy).
When you do the above each person receiving the email will only see his address and not the other ones on the list. When you are forwarding stuff that has been forwarded to you, delete all of the email address listed, then put your list in the Bcc space and your address in the To: space.

Go to the Web site http://WWW.EHOW.COM and search for "How to Prevent Hijacked Email Addresses". This site leads you to related subjects.

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