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- 22 Aug 2006
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One of my old email accounts, on Virginmedia.
I looks like (though there's no way to know I suppose) that someone or a bot hacked the password. In hindsight it wasn't the strongest possible, but better than most.
All the mails from a few days ago backwards, got deleted, and a few other settings cleared. Inbox and sentbox, all empty. The Virgin bloke, a belligerent character in an Indian call centre, got hostile when I expressed surprise that they don't keep a back up. It's their server that has lost the files, not my computer. He said he could see that it was a hack, but no more.
I have to assume that everything in 14 years of emails , is available to the hacker, including all attachments. I can't immediately think of anything which can do harm, but probably we all put stuff in emails which we wouldn't if we thought that the account might be hacked one day. Certainly I discussed lumps of money, within the family, but I don't think any sort of access info would have been there. I use several banks I'd better tell - which will probably only make things more difficult for me.
It wasn't a password I use anywhere else. No viruses detected, on 3 laptops and 2 phones
Can anyone think of something I haven't, that would be of advantage to someone else????
There would have been some copyright breaches, but no state secrets.
I would advise anyone to avoid Virgin anyway. They're bad for most things.
I had a website I run hacked, from the host's side, which was along with others of theirs. It was refreshed, with all transaction history, in a couple of days. I would have thought an ISP could keep a rolling year's worth of mail, say. All I can think of which is a loss, is records of when I've bought a few items - no big deal.
The cat's gonna have to get used to being called something very strange.
I looks like (though there's no way to know I suppose) that someone or a bot hacked the password. In hindsight it wasn't the strongest possible, but better than most.
All the mails from a few days ago backwards, got deleted, and a few other settings cleared. Inbox and sentbox, all empty. The Virgin bloke, a belligerent character in an Indian call centre, got hostile when I expressed surprise that they don't keep a back up. It's their server that has lost the files, not my computer. He said he could see that it was a hack, but no more.
I have to assume that everything in 14 years of emails , is available to the hacker, including all attachments. I can't immediately think of anything which can do harm, but probably we all put stuff in emails which we wouldn't if we thought that the account might be hacked one day. Certainly I discussed lumps of money, within the family, but I don't think any sort of access info would have been there. I use several banks I'd better tell - which will probably only make things more difficult for me.
It wasn't a password I use anywhere else. No viruses detected, on 3 laptops and 2 phones
Can anyone think of something I haven't, that would be of advantage to someone else????
There would have been some copyright breaches, but no state secrets.
I would advise anyone to avoid Virgin anyway. They're bad for most things.
I had a website I run hacked, from the host's side, which was along with others of theirs. It was refreshed, with all transaction history, in a couple of days. I would have thought an ISP could keep a rolling year's worth of mail, say. All I can think of which is a loss, is records of when I've bought a few items - no big deal.
The cat's gonna have to get used to being called something very strange.