If Your Email’s Been Hacked, You’re Screwed

And when it does, who will help you?

My aunt went on an unexpected trip to England and got mugged and desperately needed just a little bit of cash to tide her over. Just $1,950 to be wired to the UK.

How do I know?

Because she sent this desperate email to me and many other “Undisclosed Recipients:”

This message may be coming to you as a surprise but I need your help.Few days back we made an unannounced vacation trip to London,UK. Everything was going fine until last night when we got mugged on our way back to the hotel,all cash and credit card were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

(…BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH as seen on Geraldo type plea…)

You can wire the money to me through western union all you need is the Name on my passport and location below.

Name: MY AUNT’S NAME
Location: 4 Bowmans Lea London, SE23 3TL, United Kingdom
Amount:$1,950

I’ll def refund your cash as soon as i get home.

   Susan.

No, I didn’t send any money. If I had an extra pile of cash lying around, I’d have better hair.

Instead I hit reply and told Auntie to she’d been hacked, and to tell her friends she’s okay and not to send a penny anywhere.

And this is the real-time, immediate, creepy response:

It’s me.. am sorry i did not inform you that i will be going on vacation,this is for real, i’m doing everything i can to work my way out of here peacefully.. i have checked with the consulate but there is nothing really working out, most important is i don’t have enough money on me, please i need you to loan me the money,i will def refund it as soon as am back home.

This is especially disturbing because Aunt is one of those forward everything, especially dying kids needing emails to break a record, truer-than-true proof of Obama’s illegal citizenship, and various women driving alone abduction stories. Even though well-meaning nieces supply Snopes or FactCheck prove otherwise.

I am exceedingly nervous because her address book might contain birds of a feather, who would no doubt send funds to help their friend.

I forwarded this crap to my Attorney General’s office (after blasting the sender an irate, back-off fuckface I’m calling the cops, FBI, and badass mob dudes to hunt his loser ass down), but instead called my town cops to ask what to do to thwart this jerk-off.

Town cops said to call Aunt’s town cops. Aunt’s town cops said to call my town’s cops. My town cops said, they “guessed” I could file a report. “Do you want us to come out?”

I don’t know. I just want to stop this scumbag while in real time before people send grocery money to the UK.

They didn’t know how to do this.

So I went to the top. Called my Attorney General’s office and was transferred 4x before leaving a message for the appropriate attorney. Who called me back within an hour. And told me to write a letter. And change the password.

That’s it.

So when not-yet-elderly-but-too-naive-to-know-better relatives are about to be hosed by an internet loser emptying their friends accounts, your recourse to stopping it AS IT HAPPENS is to write a letter. And mail it. From the mailbox. And have Jim, my mailman, drive it to the state capital.

Isn’t this a comfort? Looks like the internet thieving douchebag knows what’s broken in the US and can’t be fixed.

PS: You can also file on-line at internet crime report center. Which may be a bit better than snail mail, but not much.