Hacker alert

[Andy_USA]

I hate to mention this to everyone but there's been a rash of hacked accounts in Twitter and PayPal. https://xkcd.com/936/ please change your passwords AND if you haven't already, activate a 2 Factor Authentication IF you have the ability to do so.

[Tracy White]

A lot of accounts get hacked when users receive emails that request the user log in for some reason. If you receive a "your account was locked" or "please update your account" from any vendor, it is far, far safer to *not* click on the emailed links and simply open a browser window and type in the address or use a bookmark. Otherwise, you are likely hitting a server that looks just like Paypal, twitter, etc., but is designed soley to harvest your user name and password so that hackers can log in to your account and do things with it. I had a client at work recently have an email account compromised this way and the hacker set up mail forwarding so they could monitor what was being sent and send out emails - one was an attempted million-dollar wire transfer heist.

Side note - I wish Microsoft's Office365 spam and malware filters were better

[naoto]

Side note - I wish Microsoft's Office365 spam and malware filters were better

The simple way to assure you don't get any spam in your Inbox is have the filter to tag *everythying* as spam.

[Arronax]

Don't know if it does any good but if you get a spoof e-mail from PayPal, forward it, without opening, to Spoof@Paypal.com.

[E-Dub]

Don't you have to open the email to bring up the forwarding capability.

[Wug]

xkcd is the comic for computer security.

https://xkcd.com/327/

[Saturn]

I hate to mention this to everyone but there's been a rash of hacked accounts in Twitter and PayPal.

Where did you hear this? Can you cite a corroborating news article or a reputable tech news site that's not xkcd?

[Colin]

Don't know if it does any good but if you get a spoof e-mail from PayPal, forward it, without opening, to Spoof@Paypal.com.

If you live in the UK, you should also forward the email to the National Fraud Investigation Bureau:

NFIBPhishing@city-of-london.pnn.police.uk

[Richard Baker]

Every major company usually has a special email address you can forward the phishing spam to- I sent one this morning pretending to be from Amazon.

There are many tells to help determine if a message is legit or not. I use GMail and if I hover the mouse over the sender it will show the originating address, no matter what the main listing shows. Legit ones also typically use your real name as listed with them and do not provide a link, they tell you to log into your account and deal with the matter there. Poor spelling or weird phrasing is a dead giveaway- Amazon or PayPal is not going to send you a message in broken English.

[TooOld4This]

xkcd is the comic for computer security.

https://xkcd.com/327/

yeeees.....

I almost smiled...once...

[battlestar62]

Thank you.