There is a phishing campaign going on at the moment with emails like this going to loads of people
Hello!
My nickname in darknet is dickhead53.
I hacked this mailbox more than six months ago,
through it I infected your operating system with a virus (trojan) created by me and have been monitoring you for a long time.If you don’t belive me please check ‘from address’ in your header, you will see that I sent you an email from your mailbox.
Even if you changed the password after that – it does not matter, my virus intercepted all the caching data on your computer
and automatically saved access for me.I have access to all your accounts, social networks, email, browsing history.
Accordingly, I have the data of all your contacts, files from your computer, photos and videos.blah blah blah
Ignore it.
They may even include your email address and a real password! This makes the emails and the claims look authentic, but don’t be fooled.
There are numerous sites that have been compromised and had customer data stolen. It happened to Facebook again recently. Generally the baddies get email addresses and passwords plus other info. Most often, the site they stole if from has reset everyone’s password, assuming they know someone has gotten in, so it won’t work there. Knowing that most people are in password overwhelm and use the same password on multiple sites, they start trying them out at gmail, facebook, hotmail, ect, etc, sometimes it works.
They also try a different approach like the emails we have all been receiving. The fact that they have a password is “proof” that they know what you are up to, but it is a fishing expedition, they are hoping to trick some vulnerable and gullible people.
You can check if your email is on any of the published lists of stolen data at https://haveibeenpwned.com/
Don’t panic if you are. There are some important things you should do
- Ignore the emails
- If you are using that email/password combination anywhere change it immediately
- Continue to ignore the emails
- Tell vulnerable people who you know (e.g. my mum)
- Don’t stop ignoring the emails
If an email that looks official doesn’t include my name, that would be the first warning sign for me. I am always happy to check out emails that you receive that you aren’t sure about. Forward them to support@
Hope that relieves some anxiety about this stuff.