WARNING / DISCLAIMER TO ALL MY E-MAIL CONTACTS
Dear all,
It would appear that my e-mail account has been 'hacked' in some way - so if you should receive any suspect / weird e-mail apparently sent from my simonshack(at)libero.it account, please know that ... it is NOT ME!
In the last few weeks I've become aware that something has gone awry with my libero e-mail account - due to a number of anomalies and odd / weird occurences. The first one was actuallly noticed by fellow Cluesforum admin nonhocapito - who wrote me this message on Sept 26, 2016:
On October 8, 2016 - our forum member "sharpstuff" complained in THIS forum post that...nonhocapito wrote:Simon, come stai? Ti scrivo qui perché ho appena notato nella mia cartella spam un messaggio dal tuo indirizzo di libero che è chiaramente un messaggio junk o di "malware", e che rimanda ad un indirizzo irraggiungibile. Così a naso mi sa che la tua casella di libero è stata compromessa, ti consiglio di fare un virus check sul tuo laptop e sicuramente di cambiare la password di libero...
Simon, how are you? I'm writing you because I have just found in my spam folder a message from your libero account which evidently is a junk or "malware" message - which sends you back to an unreachable address. My gut feeling is that your libero mailbox has been compromised , I would advice you to do a virus check on your laptop and surely to change your libero account's password."
Then, today, I received two e-mails with similar complaints / warnings. Since these last two are from non-forum members, I will not name these two individuals - but only report / transcribe the 'gist' of those other two complaint /warning messages :sharpstuff wrote:Why cannot I reply to Simon Shack via e-mail?
I sent an e-mail to his address (as a private individual and to which he has responded) and it was returned to me.as my ISP was apparently blacklisted, or something.
What is going on here?
Message1:
(...) Stop sending me phishing emails from fucking Canada you useless loser cunt.
Message 2
I of course feel compelled to announce this unfortunate 'terror attack' at my personal e-mail account to all of our readers - even though it's really not such a big deal. Hopefully, having now changed my password and sent a formal complaint to the libero staff, this problem will go away.Hi Simon,
My name is (...), I emailed you in early August about joining the forum. To cut a long story short, every email I sent you was deleted from my sent items, and someone pretending to be you sent replies on your behalf and it became very weird.
Over the next 2 months, it became apparent that my iphone, iPad and 2 PC's and 2 laptops were all hacked. All my passwords were hacked for about 20 websites I use. It has cost me lot of time, and £1000's in repairs.
The hacking later became very sinister, this was clearly a sick individual.
My initial thoughts were that it might be government orientated, but I thought they'd certainly they must have better things to do.
If during this time, you received my emails from me, please note that as my account was hacked, these may not have been from me.
(...)
I am just a photographer, based in Lancashire England, who has a keen interest in media hoaxes.
I have since been bolstering up my security, and if you are accepting forum applications again, I assure you that, for now, I am not being hacked.
Any advice on best VPN's, email providers, IT security much appreciated also.
Kind regards,
(...)