Scammed

Contrary to popular reports, I was not mugged in London last night.

Despite what you might have heard, I do not need for you to wire any money to me via Western Union.

No matter what jeff d. garry tells you, he is not me.

He did, however, hack my yahoo account this morning and, in-so-doing, he created a bunch of aggravation, quite a bit of confusion and a moderate amount of stress.

We frequently hear about the hassle of identity theft and, somehow, this character tried to pull one off on me. Fortunately, many of you that are reading this blog were on to his antics. You didn’t reply (a few of you messed with him). And, thankfully, many of you alerted me to what was going on so I could take quick action to block his efforts.

His efforts were rapid and somewhat unnerving. What the imposter jeff did:

• Hacked my account
• Changed my settings to ensure all email replies would go to the bogus jeffdgarry address
• Deleted all sent mail and each of my contacts

It was insidious and it happened in an instant. When I sent mail late to some friends late this morning, there were no issues. By early afternoon, the deed was done. Later, when I reviewed my account activity it included IP addresses from Nigeria and Mauritius (as well as Farragut!).

In short, what the bogus jeff did was fashion one of those cliche ‘woe is me’ stories. His tale was that I had been mugged while traveling overseas in London. His email plea said that muggers had stolen all my cash and that I needed for my friends to wire money to me via Western Union in order for me to get home.

You didn’t bite. You were too clever to fall for this trick. To my knowledge, no one responded in kind. In fact, I heard stories that a couple of you were emailing him and messing with him. Strangely (and sadly) he replied to a couple folks (using the now-defunct jeffdgarry address).

Once I got in touch with Yahoo by early afternoon, the email fraud technician helped me to delete the bogus account, restore my settings and lock him out. Kudos to the Yahoo crew for their work.

And kudos to all of you for alerting me. An annoying situation could have become much worse.

Many of you know that I am a positive person by nature and this annoying situation did produce a very pleasant by-product on which I can close tonight. I heard from many old and dear friends today - some by phone, others by email and a few on Facebook. It was nice to catch up. It was great to hear from you.

That’s a good thing anytime. Many thanks to the bogus Mr. Garry for that gift!

JG

(Source: Yahoo!)

Originally posted 8/6/2012