44
jobylie
6y

My private Email Account got hacked when I was in school, and they sent out a mail with something along the lines of "hey, you should really use this product to lose weight, it is great" to all of my contacts. Many of them ignored it, some of them called me to inform me about the issue (the worst part was, long after I used 2fa and changed passwords regularly, they still had my name and contact list, so they just made email adresses that looked like mine and continued to send out spam to my contacts). Anyway, one teacher of mine didn't know that this was a scam and was insulted because I regularly sent emails about her losing weight. And as if the whole situaion, which I couldn't do anything about, wasn't bad enough, my parents and I had do have a 1h conversation (which ended up in me explaining how those hacks work, and luckily she understood, but still). Never again. I prefer those fake ms support guys that call me over this every day.

Comments
  • 8
    wow, I just can't think oft someone not recognising that it is spam and thinking that this site you told them is really a good choice. I think these hackers had a better result if they just used common advertising techniques.
  • 5
    @lucaIO the teacher didn't know very much about technology and how it works, so it didn't come to her mind. But apparently this works. Even if it only really works about 1 in 10 million, they still make profit. Just like those nigerian princes.
  • 1
    Oh, now I get it. This losing weight platform is scam too and they earn a lot per single person who subscribes to it?
  • 1
    @lucaIO yes, you have to sign in with a credit card.
  • 3
    Phishing with the name of someone you know and with a somewhat reasonable mail address can be very successful. That's the next level
  • 2
    @lucaIO Are you kidding? Phishing works really well amongst a lot of people. It works so well my University has to email every single time a phishing is reported.

    A bunch of people 18+ who all grew up with computers can't distinguish a phishing email from a legit email. That's sad.
  • 2
    @jhh2450 I haven't said that phishing itself doesn't work, I know that maaaanny phishing attempts are really good made.
    But hacking into an email account and just writing an email containing "I can recommend this website if you want to loose weight. Check it out" is imo not very effective compared to emails that are exactly cloned from a popular company's mail and ask for your password.
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