Recently in the Missoulian, an article told of a woman in a small Western Montana town who discovered that her Yahoo account had been compromised. While this may seem benign on the surface, what ensued made me sit up and want to shout: “Protect your passwords!”
Her Yahoo account had been hacked by someone in, guess what, Nigeria. This hacker had figured out her password (which was probably very simple) and changed it. He then proceeded to send e-mail to her contacts. The e-mails were pleas for money : “I am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day, which means I have been starving,” read the e-mails, which asked people to wire her money in Africa. The e-mails were signed it with her usual signature of ”Thanx, Mickie”, so that people thought they were legit.
The e-mails also said that she had forgotten the bag with all her money, credit cards, return airline ticket and passport in a taxi, owed the hotel $1000 and needed $1500 to return home.
Her relatives and friends, fearing for her life and safety, started calling to ask how she could have gotten herself into such a mess. One friend actually wired $100 and said he was sorry he couldn’t send her more but he had recently lost his job.
Some of her contacts also knew that she had been to Africa at least once adding to the legitimacy.
Luckily she was home at the time, but it took her almost 8 hours of contacting authorities, Yahoo and her friends to let them know about the hacking and to change her password.
She was lucky in that only one person sent money and not that much. I think she learned her lesson that she needed to have a secure password and to keep it updated on a regular basis.
So remember, when you make a password easy to remember, it is also easy to hack. Even the smallest chink in the armor can be a big crack through which money can flow, usually away from you.
