Windows 10: Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock?

TBonee · Jan 17, 2022

My spouse's hotmail has been blocked and after many days of "follow this link and give that info" we looked up a phone number to support. Only, the phone rep wasn't helpful at all, actually he was kinda rude...he only said my spouse's email was hacked, that "this is kinda a bad thing", it will be a $250.00 fee to fix, and we could pay right then. The call was ended quickly bc something didn't seem right. Can someone plz tell me if this is a legit charge amount? And is it the norm for Microsoft support to be so unhelpful and so pushy to buy services like this?

:)

R.Mike · Jan 17, 2022

Email Hacked

Hello Greg

thank you for your response and the great information you provided.

I use two step authentication for my email account and all important web sites. I also use the full version of Malwarebytes to protect my computer.

But I will do the scans you suggested AdwCleaner and Limewire.com and let you know the results.

I am worried though that the webcam installed on my laptop could have been hacked. I never use it and forgot about it, so never disabled it.

Any suggestions as to find if it was actually hacked?

thank you

mike

Rubi · Jan 17, 2022

Hacked email

Hi

If a spammer is using a hacked/spoofed email account to send out emails, then all you do is send a bounceback to the original hacked account, not the hacker/Spammer "he does not include his email in the list". The hacker/Spammer does not know it has been bounced back and you continue to recieve emails from them. However, all that has happened is that genuine people who have been hacked and have sent out these mass emails recieved bounce back emails that you or they can do noting about. "Apart from the obvious alert to change passwords"

To be honest, there is no real way to fight back unless you have specialised hardware or an exchange account so that spam is auto filtered before it is sent on to you.

If you are using online emails such as outlook, you can add emails to the blocked user or domain list, but spammers change so regularly and they still have your email address, so you cannot keep up.

Until email providers spend some money and provide realtime protection in there servers, we can do very little.

However, what you state in your post "2. change all your email passwords" is a great solution but everyone person needs to change their passwords and complexity on a regular basis to minimise / prevent email account hacking, but what % of the population do you think does that on a regular basis? This is where the weak link lies, even if password duration policies are set, they are mostly simple to remember passwords because we have so many password in our heads these days that we need a hard drive installed to remeber them all.

This said though, if it is junk email from companies etc, then you can bounce them back but most of the send email accounts are not monitored for email returns. "Please do not reply to this email"

Thanks
Click to expand...

Thank you for this very clear explanation. Unfortunately, I do not have the kind of specialized hardware or exchange account to do what you suggest.

I find the subject interesting and what you wrote has added to my knowledge on the matter.

Regards.

hat · Jan 17, 2022

Email hacked?

I'm stumped trying to figure out why my mom (and a number of other people on my contact list) have received a spam email coming from me. It goes along the lines of: "Hello! <insert link to some Viagra page at some Canadian pharmacy website here>". I'm using Yahoo mail. I have a friend who says he's been getting spam emails from one of his friends, who also uses Yahoo mail. I'm wondering if something's going on with Yahoo mail, or is this just some coincidence, and if it is just a coincidence, then who hacked my email, and how did they even do it? I certainly never told anyone my password for anything, let alone my email address. I don't have a keylogger or any other virus either, I just ran a full malwarebytes scan and it came back clean.

Windows 10: Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock?

Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock?

Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock?

Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock?

Email hacked,support said $250.00 to unlock? - Similar Threads - Email hacked support