help ive been hacked

[jonnyc]

My gmail account was hacked in to yesterday from someone in lagos nigeria.
1. password was changed so i could not access my account
2. a new account [email protected] was set up as forwarding address from my gmail account.
3. letter sent out to approx 500 of my contacts saying i had been robbed in Ireland and needed help.signed johnny.
4.all 6500 emails i had were deleted .
5. my address book was altered so that i could not send out any emails till they were corrected.
6. many clients called me to ask if i was ok which of course inwas except the hacking.
7.other contacts may have tried to send money to western union acoount if they tried to help and get duped. i cant see any of those emails because they were forwarded to bogus yahoo account.

i had :to reset password and do a two step password for future to stop hacking.
change all my pin nos to all accounts .
face book /verified by visa/pay pal etcc.

result i have lost 6 years of emails.
one thing i do have is copy of emails on ipad and iphone which i can view(not attachments though) now but will loose the lot when i sign in with new password .
does anyone know how i can copy these emails back to main google account and then view all attachments.
seems it is impossible .

it would appear that thousands of gmail accounts have been hacked last few years.
apparently these hackers can hook up to keyboard and detect repeat patterns ie passwords and then crack your password.
lesson 1. dont use same pin for multiple accounts/ettcc
lesson 2. make sure you sign up for two step pasword sign in.
lesson 3. dont use gmail. i have had zero help

 

[Gazzer]

Dan is the man you need .

 

[Dan]

Sorry to hear about this. The most likely way that this has happened will be via 'phishing' for your password. So they'd have sent you an email every now and again with it looking like a legitimate service you use, ebay, paypal, a bank, whatever, and you click the link in the email, login to the service, and use it as normal. But you've gone though one of their login pages and they now have your login for that service, and then just test to see if you password works on other services too.

They can appear that legitimate that you wouldn't know you've done it.

I never click a link in an email and go to a website, I'll open up the browser myself and just login as normal and then go do whatever they say they want me to do (reply to a message or make a payment or whatever).

Not a lot of help now though that, but always use different passwords for different services, never chain your accounts (so if you use you gmail as the login for other services, clearly they'd be able to request a new password for that service and get the email in your gmail and access that too), and always use 2-step verification with sites that offer it. Make sure you have decent anti virus software and that more importantly, it's up to date.

As for the attachments, try forwarding one of the emails to yourself and see if you can view them then. If that works, see if you can 'select all' somehow and forward them as a bulk message. Also perhaps check what type of attachments can't be viewed on the ipad because if it's just all word documents that you can't view, but pictures you can fine, then clearly that's just because you have no software (or app) that can open word documents on your ipad. So then you just need to visit the app store and have a hunt around for some free apps that can open the attachments. That might be your best bet thinking about it.

Know what attachments they are? Do you get an error message when trying to open them?

 

[jonnyc]

dan i dont get any message at all when tying to open attachments.
i cant forward any emails as i am not signed in.
i am told that when i sign with new password i will loose all the emails on ipad.
is this a common scam dan

 

[John Benton]

On the plus side Johnny if they have your bank account details they will be forwarding £1.7m to you for helping them out!! :sofahide:

 

[CJ]

Wot a pain in the Harris.

Did you inadvertently give your password out to a big dark Nigerian by any chance.........