Many thanks to a community member who gathered these tips.
Having your email list 'hijacked' by someone who then emails your neighbors and family, asking for money because they were stranded somewhere, to virtually everyone you know, or trying to sell products such as Viagra, or asking you to click "here" to access your PayPal account because there's a "freeze" on it are quickly becoming common place. Having such a thing happen only weakens our ability to protect ourselves, our family, and our neighborhoods, particularly if they are "virtual," that is, on-line.
The Silver City Neighborhood Alliance has not had this happen. But, when it recently happened to a neighbor of mine, I thought - why not circulate some "be aware and prepare" messages. Here's what the best of the best recommend:
1. Add a fictitious email address to the very beginning of your address book offered by your email service. E.g., "
2. Never forward or reply to an email that sounds inconsistent with the person it says it's from - even if the subject line is blank, says "help me," or "I need your help," or any other phrase that sounds too simple. Friends and neighbors tend to be specific about what they're sending, and why,
3. Regularly change your password to your email account - how frequent depends on how often you suspect a computer program might determine what yours is! Use combinations of UPPERCASE letters, lower-case letters, numerals, and the characters above the numbers on your keyboard,
4. Keep a copy of all your email addresses elsewhere - like on a piece of paper,
5. Never use the same password for one Internet-related use the same as another,
6. Never put your credit card number, phone number, address, or other personal identifying data in an email,
7. Try to avoid using Microsoft Outlook, MSN Messenger as your email service - they're always getting hacked,
8. Try to avoid using Yahoo.com as your email service - they're increasing getting hacked (A friend of mine had her Yahoo email address book hijacked by someone who then translated all her emails into Cyrillik and another who had her email address hijacked for the purpose of soliciting money for an emergency. My personal emails are on a Yahoo account, but I have the fictitious A-beginning email address added. Am thinking about adding a fictitious "Z" email address to the end of the list.), and finally,
9. When forwarding or copying anyone in a message, use the "bcc," because that will hide all the email addresses that a message is going to from anyone else who gets it.
8. Be ready for it to happen anyway.
