Many users have complained in recent months about spam emails appearing to come from their own accounts. Despite not knowing why, reports of friends, family, and contacts receiving spam emails that appear to come from them have worried many people.
Some have had their accounts suspended or shut down by their service providers. For many, this experience can be highly disruptive. It's a problem that can cause many issues in both your professional and personal life.
The key to defense is learning how these attacks happen and figuring out how to protect yourself and your contacts against them.
Hackers Using Your Email Against You
Scammers who send out spam messages continually look for ways to make the process faster, cheaper, and more efficient. It's the best way to make more money daily by scamming unsuspecting victims for even more cash.
One of the most efficient ways they do this is by hijacking ready-made, trusted email accounts like yours. Hackers have several tools at their disposal to attempt to hijack your accounts.
Some of the principles which make email fast and easy to use means that details, such as those in the 'from' field, are easy to fake. A hacker might change the information supplied to make it appear that the email comes from anyone.
You cannot do much to defend your email against such an attack. However, you can work to verify that an email, even one you expect to receive, does come from the person you believe it to be. If your email provider flags an incoming email as 'suspicious' or 'untrustworthy', it may be.
Stolen Credentials
Hackers often buy large bundles of email addresses and passwords from the dark web. Following hacks of major companies and service providers, leaked emails are often put up for sale.
The value of these details comes from the fact that passwords are unlikely to have been changed, the details attached to them are trusted, and hackers often use them to access additional services.
How To Detect an Email Intrusion
Knowing that malicious hackers are using your details can take a long time. You might even be the last person in your contacts to know.
The first sign to look out for is many unexpected emails in your inbox. These are likely to reply to emails you never sent in the first place. Out-of-office, automatic responses, people complaining about spam, and people responding to the email as if it were genuine may all come to you first.
Keep a close eye on unexpected emails appearing suddenly in your inbox or outbox. A hacker may be spear-phishing someone that you do business with or trust. By acting as you, using your address and details, they may be able to divert payments or confidential information to their accounts instead.
Protecting Yourself Against Hackers, Attackers, And Hijackers
Sometimes, your computer might have been compromised, giving hackers access to your services. Malicious software may have infected your machine to steal data and infect your contacts.
Take extra care to change your passwords if you believe a hacker has accessed your email. Use a different, more secure password for your email than for every other service. Your email account is often the key to accessing many of the services you use most.
Run a virus scan and maintain security updates if you think your computer could have been infected.
If you believe your data is being used in a risky way, have your machine and services looked at by a professional.
If you think your email could have been hijacked or your details used elsewhere, call us at (786) 233-2002 to have it cleaned up today.
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