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Monday 14 July 2008

Aargh spammers

Yesterday my brother phoned me to say that he'd received some spam e-mail from one of my e-mail addresses.

It seems that someone in China got hold of my password and logged into my account to send them. We think that the person must have got it from when I used the computers in the public library either by watching me or by having some kind of programme installed on the computer.

I immediately changed my password on everything I used at the library and now I'm going through everything else I'm registered with and changing the e-mail address and password for them all (I have the same passwords for most things and also on a lot of things one's e-mail address is the username). I've developed a new system for passwords so that they are not all the same but they are not too difficult to remember.

In future if our internet goes off I think I will try to only use the internet at houses of people I know rather than the public library and if I do have to use the library I will change my password as soon afterwards as possible.

The moral of the story is:
  • change your password regularly;
  • don't have the same password for everything;
  • be alert when you use public computers;
  • have a separate e-mail address (with an empty address book) for signing up for things online.

3 comments:

Kristin-Homemaker@Heart said...

that happened to my old myspace. it was a mess. the person who got in sent really awful things to all my friends and Jesse. I think I may have known who they were. But I can't be sure.
All my passwords are in different languages.
Good luck with getting things straightened out!

Toni said...

Oh my gosh Susan!!How awful hope you get everything straightened out.Have a wonderful day!!

Jimena said...

Very very good points. My husband and I have just been talking about passwords and changing them regularly and not using the same one for everything. Because he is so computer savvy he can write up a program that will make a password for each account that he has... I won't be using that but he also gave me some other good points. These are very good reminders!

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