ComputerGuy Posted October 16, 2014 Report Share Posted October 16, 2014 I've been faced with a large number of clients having had web-based hacks of email in the last two weeks. Apart from the typical theft of Contact names, an intriguing new one has surfaced. People have suddenly found they are no longer receiving emails. In the world of webmail (that is, email you get by going to a website, versus email delivered to your computer program such as Outlook or Live Mail), it is pretty much impossible for email not to work. Those webmail sites (Yahoo, HotMail/Outlook.com, GMail, etc.) are controlled by the companies that own them. We as users cannot make "errors" in use that would prevent them working. Yet here I had several people insist they are not getting their emails. It turns out that hackers, having somehow bypassed the sites' security features, have been adding filters to their accounts. In particular, a filter that says "anything that arrives with the '@' in the address gets moved to the Trash". Think about that for a sec. It turns out all their email did arrive... but it got sent directly to the Trash, bypassing the Inbox, and making it look like they were getting no mail at all for days on end. I found an even nastier variation on the filter issue: hidden filters. I don't how how, but a couple of these accounts had a filter to do the same thing, except you could not see the filter in the Settings list. I had to add a new, unrelated filter, which caused the damaging filter to appear, at which point it could easily be removed. So if this happens to you, you are now armed with the knowledge of what to do to fix it. (I'd like to tell you how these people are hacking into these giant, industrial email companies, but I have no substantial idea, and they're not talking. GMail has been, historically, the most secure of these services, but from my experience this week, no longer. It is just possible that each of my customers actually allowed something onto their machines that caused this to happen, and two out of the approximately one-dozen did admit this.... perhaps the rest don't really remember. Scanning all their machines only produced indications of spyware on a couple of them.) Thanks to those folks who helped me track these down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bournemouth Posted October 16, 2014 Report Share Posted October 16, 2014 Computer Guy - thanks for keeping us up on what is happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ComputerGuy Posted October 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2014 Bournemouth, thanks for keeping me up-to-date with your very helpful research on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xena Posted October 16, 2014 Report Share Posted October 16, 2014 Thank you, CG. I am sharing your post on my Facebook page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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