A very disturbing thing happened to me last night, and as it appears to be directly related to my Café account, I've decided to post the general details here as a preautionary tale.

At about 2:00 AM PST I received a computer generated message from the Café at my email account of record. It advised me that i, or someone pretending to be me had submitted a "lost password" report requesting a new password be issued. It contained a new password that I could use if I so desired. Otherwise, it advised me to ignore the email if I, in fact, had not made the request.

Since I was logged into the Café at the time and have no password problems, it was immediately apparent that someone either spoofed my email address to make the request or had hacked my primary email account and sent the request from there.

Within five minutes of receiving the Café email, I changed the password on my email server, just as a precaution.

Two hours later I received an email notification from my server in response to an alleged report submitted by me that I had lost access to my primary account. That email was sent to my secondary email account and contained instructions about how to regain access.

Well that confirmed it. The perpetrator HAD hacked my email and when he tried to access my account again found that the password had been changed. Obviously, he knew none of the answers to my security questions and was unaware the my accounts are constantly monitored and all activity is reported immediately to my mobile phone.

I went ahead and changed the secondary email password and every other sensitive password that I have.

If it had not been for the Café notification, and had I not been up at that late hour, I likely would have had no idea what had happened until earlier today. By that time I can only imagine what this hack would have done with my Café account.

Obviously, the perpetrator was a member of the Café and likely of this forum (otherwise why would his first action after hacking my email be to request a new Café password?) and THAT is what is most disturbing. Who would want to do something like this to me, and to what end? To make phony posts under my name?

Fortunately, I have a pretty good idea of who it may have been and his motivations.I have forwarded copies of all of the email correspondence, including header and ISP information to the Office of the Attorney General of Washington, email fraud division for further investigation. It appears that the perpetrator isn't quite as clever as he thinks as he made at least one amateurish mistake.

If he is identified, I trust that he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If he is, as is likely, outside the State of Washington, there is also federal jurisdiction. And he can rest assured that I am NOT going to let this lie or die.

But I am starting to wonder if it's even worth staying here if I'm going to be victimized by cyber stalkers.

In the meantime, just stay alert and check your security regularly.

Good thoughts,

Bob, I am shocked! A Café member. Unreal. I cannot imagine what their motivation would be. Hang in there, my friend!

Doug

Bob, can you provide any insight to who this may be?

But seriously, sorry to hear that this happened to you. Pretty pathetic for someone to try to do that to someone's account. Hopefully this gets resolved and the perpetrator is caught and prosecuted. It sucks that so many of the Café's greats have left because of other people acting like idiots.

I'm not going to speculate or make any accusations publicly until the perpetrator is identified. Nor should anyone else. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty- and I think that the latter will just be a matter of time.

That was a criminal assault and I sure hope you nail whoever it was. It's one thing for us to snap and snarl online, but this is a whole 'nother level.

Go get 'em...keep us posted. And, if it's any help, there's probably no more of his kind here.

**sigh**

That sucks, Bob.

David

As a qualified information security specialist, I want to say that you're very lucky.
When he gain access to your mail, he was able to restore your PayPal password, and I guess it will cause much more trouble

How would you know if he was able to restore my PayPal password and will cause me much more trouble? I changed ALL of my passwords after he was no longer able to access my email.

I'm just speculating here but I think Pavel meant to say "is able" instead of "was able", to demonstrate an alternative worser future you were able to prevent.

Im happy you were able to stop it so early and that it didn't cause any trouble with your accounts.

We would hate to lose you on the Café, so please don't let 1 person's actions affect you much, as troubling as it is.

Hi Bob

Just a suggestion - but it doesn't sound like your email was breached to me at all. Instead, it sounds like they've tried to infiltrate your Café account, and as a matter of course the Café automatically sent a password reminder and/or change doc to your email.

Still, good practice to change everything.

It sucks but why is anyone shocked? This happens a lot.

The answer. Change you password often. And make it a real !@#$% to hack. Use a phrase. A long one.

Sorry about your troubles, Bob.

Later,

D


P.S. Just changed my password. Again.

Huge bummer there Bob. Hope they get their just desserts!

That's exactly what I wanted to say.
Thank you)

Reread what I wrote. Two hours AFTER I got the notification from the Café and changed my personal email password, I received a notice from my email provider that I had submitted an "unable to access" account report. I did no such thing. It was obvious at that moment that the individual who had hacked into my account tried to sign in again and found the password had been changed.

I think aukt is right in this case. You usually don't need to have access to someone's email account to to submit a request for the password to be changed or to claim not to be able to access it.

That doesn't diminish what happened, that someone was trying to gain access as part of an attack on Bob's security. It does mean that it is less likely that his communications were actually exposed.

In addition to the complex password suggestion, if you have the chance with your email accounts remember to turn on 2 factor authentification, it makes attacks like this extremely difficult.

Phill

I have two factor security. But why are the two of you acting as if I don't know anything about an account breach? I know exactly what happened, when it happened, and how it happened. And, I have a pretty good idea who did it. I have not, for obvious reasons, described all of the details in the OP- notably the "amateurish mistake" I referred to.

The password is important, but usually the weakest point is the security question. Your first job, pet's name or personal information aren't a good idea for a security question, someone who knows you or someone related to you can access this information. Anyway Bob seems to know what he does and did the correct thing and changed all the information (change the security questions in your email if you haven't). I hope that you can find the hacker and give him a lesson.

Thanks for the warning, Bob!

What an *******. He picked on the wrong dude at the wrong time and It's good to know that Bob was able shut him down pretty fast. If anyone can get this prosecuted it's our resident lawyer 😄

I think it's because they care about your situation and just trying to help.... So they are gving thoughts in general for you and anyone else who might not know about this sort of thing.... IMHO