Is this hacking or something.

Roland_Sausage

bjbyorkshire wrote: »

It is so worrying that this sort of thing is sent to your e mail address. Would it be a good idea to change my e mail password? I don't want to change my e mail address as I have had it for a long time and it would be very difficult to use another e mail address as all my banks have this one. Would you advise that I should stop using this or just continue being careful what I open?

Thanks

No need to change your email password, although I don't suppose it hurts if you are worried.

Be careful what you open, but don't worry about this particular email. It was harmless enough provided you didn't actually fill in the form.

marleyboy

It is so worrying that this sort of thing is sent to your e mail address. Would it be a good idea to change my e mail password?

Try not to work yourself up over it. These sort of e-mails are very common and your email address was simply randomly plucked. Akin to those cold callers that ring the phone.

So long as you do not open any links, files or images sent to you by anonymous spammers, you should be safe.

bjbyorkshire

Thanks for the reassurance folks.

Is it true that using Apple I pad or computers you are less likely to be hacked than if you use windows computers. Thinking online banking use.?

Thanks

Cycrow

bjbyorkshire wrote: »

Thanks for the reassurance folks.

Is it true that using Apple I pad or computers you are less likely to be hacked than if you use windows computers. Thinking online banking use.?

Thanks

No its not true. Phishing emails like this work the same on any platform. They basically try to trick people into handing over details that they can use

its true that non windows computers are less likely to get viruses, as most viruses tend to be designed to affect windows computers.

Howver, these aren't really the same as being hacked

paddyrg

All the recent furore over Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities having private nude photos leaked online was because of an icloud 'hack'. Phishing is at least as dangerous to apple users as not because it's attacking the person, not the computer. Some would even say the risk is higher as Apple nurtured a myth of 'we protect you from nasty things', leaving some users less savvy. If they didn't ask for bank details, but for you to login to your iTunes/appstore account instead, on a page that looked pretty with an apple on it, it would be easy to give away your password, your account credit would be emptied in a few heartbeats, and username and password tried against other sites in case you used the same logon details for everything!

The best way to experience the internet is to assume it is hostile (in fact your router is probably blocking a dozen or many more malicious packets and port scans an hour which you never even know about). Any legit company will know this and go out of their way to price to you that their legit - PayPal includes my full name every time for instance, so if I get a 'PayPal' email to Mr Paddyrg (which is an alias), I know for sure it's fake. Spam and malicious emails made up 85%of US email traffic a few years ago (not sure of current figures, but probably similar or worse). Spam filters and anti-phishing features like those provided by GMail are incredibly effective, and will catch almost everything - but almost everything isn't 100%, and there's a lot of crookedness out there looking for innocent or vulnerable users.

The biggest recent growth has been spear phishing middle management in large companies, but there are plenty of attacks against the rest of us too.