This morning, I received the following email from a Mom in the City reader/friend:
Hi,
How you doing? I made a trip to London (United Kingdom)
unannounced some days back, Unfortunately i got mugged at gun point
last night! All cash, Credit card and phone were stolen, i got messed
up in another country, stranded in London, fortunately passport was
back in our hotel room. It was a bitter experience and i was hurt on
my right hand, but would be fine. I am sending you this message cos i
don’t want anyone to panic, i want you to keep it that way for now!
My return flight leaves in few hours but I’m having troubles sorting
out the hotel bills, wondering if you could loan me some money to sort
out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport about ($1,850).
I have been to the police and embassy here, but they aren’t helping
issues, I have limited means of getting out of here, i have canceled
my cards already and made a police report, I won’t get a new card
number till I get back home! So i really need your help.
The hotel manager won’t let me leave until i settle the hotel bills,you can speak with him through this number +44 702 406 3825 +44 702 406 3825 +44 702 406 3825 +44 702 406 3825 .I’m freaked out at the moment
You could wire whatever you can spare to my name and hotel address via
Western union:
Name: (Full Name)
Location:21 Burnaby Street, Chelsea,
Greater London
SW10 0PL.
United Kingdom
Get back to me with the details, would def refund it to you once we
arrive! Hopefully tomorrow, below are the details needed for me to
pick up the money
MTCN:
Amount Sent
I await your prompt response.
*(Name of friend)…
This didn’t sound right, so I emailed my friend back to make sure that it wasn’t her. To my surprise, I received the following response regarding whether or not she had sent the original email:
YES i did, we are not Okay right now.we need your help urgently. our flight leaves in few hours time from now ,but we are still having problem settling our hotel bill.pls we don’t want to miss our flight. the kids are still feeling the shock.
Pls we want you to kindly wire some money to my Name via western union ,so we can sort out our hotel bills and get back home tomorrow,I will def refund you back your money.
Here is the information below.
Name: Full Name
Location:21 Burnaby Street, Chelsea,
Greater London
SW10 0PL.
United Kingdom
Get back to me with the details..the hotel manager won’t let me leave until i settle the hotel bills,you can speak with him through this number +44 702 406 3825 +44 702 406 3825.I’m freaked out at the moment…
So, I called my friend’s NYC number to make sure that it really wasn’t her. She answered the phone frazzled. It turns out that someone has completely hacked her account. She has been getting calls all morning from concerned family and friends. To make a bad situation worse, her email company won’t let her change her account information/password because there is a security block on her account. Meanwhile, the person who has hacked her account is freely sending and receiving messages from her account. How crazy is that? I googled “email hack” to see if I could find a way to help her out. Instead, the top listings were for companies that taught others how to hack emails. What?!
The point:
-We already know to be careful with suspicious looking emails, but it never hurts to be reminded.
And
-If you ever get an email from me requesting money (asking you to click a weird link; etc.), you can just delete it. If I ever needed to ask anyone for money, I would do it in person…or at the very least by phone 🙂
Has your email ever been hacked? If so, how did you go about getting it fixed?