Hacked E-mail Account

Yes it has happen to my wife and I, over the past three weeks. We both have received emails in our Yahoo email account that looked like they came from someone we knew, asking for help. We both had the same reaction to the possibility of its authenticity but at the same time consider the probability of the person contacting us in this manner for help? Apparently this has become a wide spread internet occurrence that in some cases people have acted on only to find out it was a scam to get them to wire money. In those situations where the person follows the instruction to respond to the request they later find out that the email never originated from the person that was suppose to have needed help. It is a scam that touches on the basis desire of our good nature to want to help a friend or acquaintance in need.  The root cause of the situation is a virus that has infected the email account of the person that is supposely sending the email for help. After the virus infects their computer it allows access to all their email accounts and the hacker to proceed from there.

Yahoo has confirmed this can happen. What apparently happens in this situation is the person supposely requeting help ,received an e-mail infected with what's called a "worm virus." When they opened the infected attachment to that e-mail, the hacker was able to send out "a mass e-mail" to the person's friends from there address, asking for money.


These are the times in which we live and since it would be very difficult, if not impossible to just stop using the computer to avoid this potential situations than the next best thing is to learn from others experience and knowledge. The suggested approach to avoiding this happening to you is, if you get an e-mail from a friend in need of money, call them first to verify their whereabouts, before sending money.