Yahoo! Mail Hacked - What Should You Do?

It was Monday morning. I opened my Gmail account and found a strange message: an email message from my Yahoo! mail account. The actual email message is shown below.

Subject: RE

hey,

how are you ?

Just received my iphone "3"gs 32gb from this website. www. deouer.com , much cheaper than others and genuine . if you would like to get one,you can check it out,

Regards,

(my name)

Note: DO NOT ATTEMPT OT VISIT THE SITE MENTIONED IN THE SPAM MAIL ABOVE. IT CAN BE DANGEROUS.

I immediately accessed my Yahoo! Mail and found out the disaster. Somebody had accessed my account without my knowledge and sent spam messages to ALL MY CONTACTS. Some of them even replied and asking if what I sent is really true. Of course, I replied and explained what happened.

Image via Wikipedia

To further the damage, I also found out that ALL MY MESSAGES, (Inbox, Sent, Draft, and Spam) has been DELETED. Also, my ENTIRE CONTACT LIST has been DELETED.

How to Fix Hacked Yahoo Account?

After realizing that it is nearly impossible to restore my messages and contacts by myself, I immediate look in the internet for similar cases. I found a forum post describing the same scenario as mine but did not have anything to help me.

Finally, I decided to contact Yahoo Customer Care. I looked at the category of my situation and I filled up the corresponding form. One day after, my contacts and my messages were restored to the time I last saw them.

They said that my account has been compromised and mentioned some scenario that might have happened.

1. I left my account logged in in a public internet cafe.
2. The public internet cafe installed a keylogger software to register my password.
3. I gave my username and password to phishing emails sent by those who claim to be Yahoo Customer service.
4. third party applications my have compromised my username and password.

Internet security is a serious matter. In my case, it didn't do much damage since it is only my web mail. But what if my credit card account was the one that was hacked? Or what if my online bank account password was stolen? The results are devastating. Your security in the web is your responsibility.

ANOTHER TEXT MESSAGE SCAM – SCHOLARSHIP FROM COCOPLANS?

UPDATE: This is not a scam, as many commenters claim. But this is a SPAM, unsolicited text message.

Below is the actual message I received from a person who introduced himself as Hector Gaylican. He used this mobile number: 09122549675.

“Greetings! This is Hector Gaylican of COCOPLANS INC. We are proudly informing you that you are chosen as one of our lucky recipients who are entitled to claim a two year SCHOLARSHIP CERT. GRANT and FREE HEALTHWAY CARD plus RAFFLE COUPON. Your security claiming code is (MVS-26436-CCP) ABSOLUTELY FREE! You may claim your certificate on June 21 to 22, 2010 in our Makati redemption center. Please call @ Tel. # 8562317/8563145/8563854 between 10am-5pm. Thanks and God bless.”

The above SMS message is more likely a scam since it has the elements of a scam such as:

1. It didn’t mention MY NAME! It is more likely that the scammer is targeting guessed mobile numbers.

2. It is a TEXT (SMS) Message and NOT A CALL. There’s more credibility in a call than a text message, right?

3. It invites ME to contact certain numbers instead of THEM calling me providing the necessary details for claiming your prize. This scenario is typical of text scams. When the victim calls the number, he/she would be convinced to pay registration and other miscellaneous amounts to claim his/her prize. After that, the scammer will just disappear.

4. It is TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. This is the most common element of scams. In this case, I don’t remember any raffle or promo I’ve joined in the past year.

All of us should be very careful when it comes to entertaining mysterious text/SMS like this. One single step like replying or trying to call the numbers provided may spell disaster to us. Like what I always say on this blog, WHEN IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT’S PROBABLY NOT TRUE.

How Did You Fare in the Last Cebu Pacific Piso Fare?

Cebu Pacific’s latest Piso Fare is over or at least it’s nearly over as of the time of this writing. How did you fare? Have you booked your desired tickets? How many and how much? For most people including me, I think, it’s been a nice promo. But for some, it’s just terrible…cramming up to be online to book tickets just to find out that your desired date tickets has been sold out!
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Follow Cebu Pacific on Twitter

I had my twitter account (http://twitter.com/ideasdigest) and I made sure that I’m following Cebu Pacific (http://twitter.com/CebuPacificAir ) tweets as frequently as every day. Why on twitter? The answer is simply because it’s the first tool used by Cebu Pacific Air to communicate their latest promo to the public. I mean as far as I know, that’s the quickest way for them to say “Hey folks, we have a promo... blahblahblah...”

How about their email newsletters? Well, it’s very inconsistent. Sometimes you receive it quick but sometimes it arrives after the promo it announces is over. It’s not reliable, that’s it.

How about visiting www.cebupacificair.com frequently? It’s also good, but twitter, I think is faster than anything else in my knowledge unless you have a friend working for Cebu Pacific.

So How Did You Fare?

On one of my blog post here announcing that promo, I received several complaints about the way the promo was announced. It was allegedly mentioned on their ad on a newspaper that the promo will start Friday, June 11 but as most of us know, the moment Cebu Pacific tweeted the promo on Thursday (June 10, 2010) afternoon, the promo has already begun. By midnight of the same day, almost all dates have been sold out and the website is enormously SLOW.

How about you? Any thoughts?

Apple Announces iPhone 4 while Google unleashes Caffeine

Image by Farid Iqbal via Flickr

iPhone 4
Apple Inc. announced early this week the latest version of their industry leading mobile phone, the iPhone. Commonly referred to as iPhone 4, the latest model boasts the following features:
- More scratch free and tougher glossy panels at the front and at the back.
-“Retina Display” capable of high resolution displays even exceeding the capability of the Human Retina
-New integrated antenna wrapped around the sides.
- A4 chip which is more powerful and more energy efficient compared to its predecessor.
-Built-in three-axis gyroscope capable of advanced motion sensing with greater precision for an even better gaming experience.
- Front facing 5MP Camera capable of capturing stunning photos, HD videos, and video chats.
- 2 microphones for better phone calls and audio-video recording
http://www.apple.com/iphone/design/#design-video




Google Caffeine

Google has just announced the release of its new search engine codenamed Caffeine. Google explained on its official blog that this new index will be capable of giving 50% more fresher result including social posts, newest photo and video uploads.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html