I’ve just caught on to the fact that my gmail account has been sending out email to everyone who sends me a message. At first, I thought my password was compromised. It actually still may be the case. The first thing I did was to change the password on my account. Then I analyzed the messages. They were all the same:
Hii there, how’s it going? I’ve never tried this before but I’m really
bored lol, my friend said she did this and found a very nice guy so I
figured i will try it, I made a profile with my pics at
http://xolocalsnow.com?browneyes922 if you’re interested send me a
message …talk to you soon xo
Ugh. Everyone thinks I talk like that now. Sounds like I’m a little girl. Searching for browneyes922 lead me to a post indicating that my vacation responder was on with this message.
Gmail Vacation Responder Hacked
Going back through my email, I found that this had started up 3 days ago. What’s even worse is that the earliest message shows me sending a message in a thread with this:
heey there, youre what im looking forr! msg me backkk
A lot of the original activity shows me sending lots of these messages to people on craigs list without an initial email to respond to. It started at around 10PM Friday night. All I can think of is that my wife and I were out grocery shopping at that time, so it couldn’t have been something I initiated with a website. However, I am thinking that it had something to do with one of those websites where they check your gmail address book to find your other friends to connect to.
I am used to the idea that my computer is the thing that needs to be protected from viruses and trojans. However, with applications moving from the desktop to the web, hackers appear to be targeting these very services without worry about getting past local virus, identity theft, malware, and spyware protection.
I think I’m going to become a bit more shady when it comes to building up my connections on social networking sites from now on.
June 14, 2009 at 7:34 am
Hi Man,
COOL BLOG!
Ohh yes!! There is soooo many ways to make money online. It is some good once and some that are not good at all. I have walked the long way to find out what did work and what did NOT work.
Do Not Chase The Money – Give Value & Let The Money Chase You. That`s how it works!
But it is true though, the good ol`cliche: “The Money Is In The List”.
List building is something you should NEVER skip in your efforts to make money online.
I have written a cool free guide how I build my list quite fast and effective.
I have got some really great feedbacks from it… It`s definitive worth a read.
Thanks for the advices
All the best
André Thomassen
“Failure Lies Not In Falling Down – Failure Lies In Not Getting Up”
June 14, 2009 at 8:55 am
Hi Dedric,
Judging by the last comment, you need a better comment spam filter as well. That last comment was surprisingly well-formatted (like a letter) and didn’t even include an URL.
Google has an API for other websites to use to check your contacts without you giving away your Gmail password (which is also your Google password). I forget what the API is called. Maybe Open Social? Anyway, it’s only useful if the other website knows about it.
June 23, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I just discovered the same problem but it had been going on for two weeks. Finally figured it out when one of the Craigs List targets emailed me back.
I was out of town on a hotel wireless connection when it started; maybe it had something to do with that.
Changed my password – hoping that solved the problem.
August 5, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Same here.. one of my not so active emails got hacked. it sent that initial email to some craiglist personal ads and then the vacation one to everyone that sent me an email.. weird enough everything started on my birthday, june 10.