Rare, but it happens. A client with an online @yahoo email account was recently hacked and spam email sent to all their address book contacts.
If your email account has been “phished” this could result in your contacts’ security also being compromised if they reply to the email address or, if they call a bogus phone number in your email signature, charged premium call rates, collected by the phisher.
This advice could save you.
First Step – Contact Yahoo
URGENT: (a) change the account password, (b) security questions and (c) check your email signature. If you can’t access your Yahoo account, contact “support”, have the password reset and ask for any additional advice. Then enact the next step immediately.
Next Step – Email your Contacts
As soon as you have secured your email account send an email to all your contacts with the subject line “IMPORTANT – Do NOT Open my Last Email”. Provide a short apology, explaining that your email account had been hacked. You owe it to them.
Then …..
Consider the vulnerability of only ONE email address, where all contact details and history could be wiped or stolen. So, get proactive and set up an alternative email address (details of which you NEVER give out) and have all primary account emails forwarded to that account, backing it up. If you have your own domain name/ website, you SHOULD be using your own domain name emails, like info@yourcompany.com.au
yahoo! was used as the example, but online email accounts such as @hotmail, @mail, @inbox etc could be equally vulnerable. For more Reputation Management measures – contact john@social.as.
Image thanks to altermark
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