Minutus

Dear Minutus members,
Meg Cole, homeopath from US and one of the old members of Minutus group is in a great trouble in Nigeria. Please let me know if you know anyone in Nigeria to help her. This is very very urgent.
Regards,
Ardavan

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Dear Ardavan,
Pl state the state of distress.
Regards.
Prof. [Retd.] Dr. S.P.Chakravorty.
Date 9 Feb 2008
Ardavan Shahrdar wrote:

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The email Ardavan received *appears* to have been from someone other
than Meg, hacking into her account. It was an "I'm stranded in
Nigeria, please send lots of money" appeal, similar to another that was
forwarded to the list a couple of months back. The thing that I find
especially creepy about this, is that apparently they are not only
sending from her hacked address, but also reading replies made to it.
When it gets a little later here I'm going to try phoning her, but
Ardavan has concluded that the mail (and a follow-up he received) was
not sent by her.
Best wishes,
Shannon

Here's an update on Meg-who-is-not-in-Nigeria. It's a good
cautionary tale, so she's given me (enthusiastic) permission to share
with the list what had happened.

Some days(?) ago she got what *appeared* to be an authentic email from
Yahoo, saying that one of her accounts had been inactive--which was
true--and that both of them would be closed if she did not reply to
that email. So she replied, providing her name, password and (bad
news) date of birth, and shortly after, she found herself locked out of
her own email account; they are not just *sending* from her address,
they have taken it over. That is what tipped her off that something
was amiss, and shortly after that began getting calls from people in
her contact list, checking to make sure she wasn't really in Nigeria.
(And also is replacing credit cards and has bank account flagged; I'm
not sure how all of that could be accessed with an email account??)

She says that Yahoo has told her there is no way that she can either
regain control of her email address, or even close the account! How
can that be????

So I'm not sure what one *should* do in response to an official-looking
e-mail of that sort... Maybe one take-home message is not to do
business with any company that can't be reached by phone?

So, that's the latest chapter in the Assume Nothing Manifesto.

Shannon

The Lesson here is NEVER NEVER NEVER click on anything in an email, no matter how official it looks.
I had a similar email the other day saying my account would be closed due to inactivity. I did not click on the link they provided but instead went into my Favourites where I keep all my links to emails and websites etc, and reactivated my email that way. That's all that's needed; nothing else.
Christine
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Yes, thanks, that's important good advice, to never click on embedded
links in email, or advertisement. She didn't do that, tho; they hadn't
sent her any link, just a request for information, which she supplied,
not realizing it wasn't really Yahoo. I wonder if it would do Yahoo
any good to have the address that she replied to--or whether that was
also a facade?

I find it weird that Yahoo told her they cannot close the hijacked
account. How can they not eliminate, or at least stop activity, on one
of their own accounts?
Shannon