“I Hacked Your Device” – Email Scam

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Regular readers will know that we here at OPQ post regularly about SPAM and email scams, particularly ‘phishing‘ scams.

Today we are seeing a re-appearance of a phishing scam from last year. As we expect the prevalence of these scams to increase we thought we’d publish an example so our readers can spot them more easily.

This particular nasty email plays on the readers fear that they have already been hacked. But a careful examination of the email will show that this is not the case.

The first two paragraphs of the scam email make a false claim. This email was NOT sent using your email address at all. All they did was send the email with the “Reply To:” set to your email address. An examination of the email headers will reveal this. In the email headers look for the lines beginning with “Received From:” which will show the actual sender of the email.

Once you have determined that the email was not in fact sent from your email account, the rest of the scaremongering in this email becomes superfluous.

Now consider; if someone really has total control over your computer, can see everything you are doing why send you an email to let you know? Why not just send the message directly to your screen or Desktop?

We all need to be prepared for more of these kinds of scams. Send them to you Junk folder and ignore them.

If you are unsure about any email that you receive and would like a second opinion, we are happy to assist. Send suspicious email to abuse at opqnet.net and include the full headers and we’ll analyse the email and get back to you.

In short, do not worry about this or similar emails. Neither hackers nor cyber criminals have infiltrated/hacked your computer and there is no video of you watching pornography. Ignore the message and do not send any Bitcoins. Your email, name, and password was probably stolen from a compromised website such as Yahoo (these website breaches are common). If you are concerned, you can check if your accounts have been compromised by visiting the haveibeenpwned website.

Stay sharp! Click Safe!