Email hacked
 

Wife says her sister received an email, purporting to be from wife's email, with a suspicious link. So she thinks her email is hacked. What should she do?

She should log in right now and change her password to something complex.

Then check what's in sent items.

Is this a Gmail or similar online account?

Most likely a spoofed email which those things are 90% of the time.

What is the real reply to address?

Just because it displays your wifes addy does not mean it actually is.

Usually they lift the address book and portray to be the person they ripped off but send from another address. Change password to a real password will fix it...

If this is email spoofing, which it probably is, changing a password will not "fix it".

I got an email today about 'my' fuel-card (I don't have one) with a link to 'my account', and 'my latest bill' attached.

At the bottom of the e-mail was:

Please also note that if you cannot open this attachment and are using
Outlook Express to view your mail you should select Tools / Options / Security Tab and deselect the option marked "Do not allow attachments to be opened that potentially may be a virus".

Yeah, seems legit..................

When it happened to me I walked away from that internet provider and went to another one. I made sure to let my credit card co. know and they issued me another credit card number. I could not log on to the original email account and the hacker used my account to ask for money saying that I was in need of money! I let the original internet provider know of my situation. Fortunately none of my friends were stupid enough to send the other "me" money LOL

O hh you mean you dont need that 100k I was going to send you for your transgender operation?

It's most likely spoofed phishing. They didn't necessarily get your email or access to your address book. Recipients and senders are sent unsecured between servers to establish the connection to send emails. This handshaking can be sniffed. Have received spoofed phishing emails from people I know that I never sent or received an email from, but were my friends on facebook.

Usually your ISP or email provider is going to contact you if you have been hacked. The hacker will be injecting emails on the email server from your account and send them enmass alerting the IPS and or email provider by sending more emails per hour than allowed and will be reported by most anti-spam services. If that happens you should be asked to immediately change your password, AND update to the newest version of your email clinet. Mostly old versions get password hacked.

If someone sends a link in an email ALWAYS make sure the actual link is where the text says it is. Same with web sites. The typical phishing attempt is to tell you that you need to update some sort of account information hoping you will have an account with that service and click on the link go to there site that looks exactly like what you expect and enter your information for them.

And DO NOT one any attachments you aren't absolutely sure you asked for.

Think before you Click.

100% positive that Facebook plays a role in this somehow.
I get these sorts of emails all the time. On a daily basis. From many people's names who I've never had contact with through email, only Facebook.

Someone is scraping Facebook for contacts and friend's lists.

Don't click ads, quizzes, polls, etc...

That's how you give up your identity,