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Joe90
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30 Jun 2023, 8:58 pm

My boyfriend keeps getting emails from Facebook sent to him saying his account has been hacked into
or something. The thing is, he doesn't have a Facebook account and as never even attempted to create one before.
Does this sound like spam that we should just ignore?


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Cornflake
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01 Jul 2023, 11:18 am

Yes, it's a fishing spam - and they won't be from Facebook either; the actual sender is likely masked so it looks legit.

In the past I've received emails from several banks informing me that a password needs to be changed - they even provide handy links for me to use. :roll:
The tiny problem is I do not and never have held accounts with them.

Any included links (do not click on them) will doubtless point to a convincingly realistic page inviting you to enter your existing account details.


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Joe90
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01 Jul 2023, 11:57 am

Thank you Cornflake. We didn't click on any links provided.


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KitLily
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01 Jul 2023, 12:16 pm

Definitely spam. Delete at once. I've had loads of those.


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Kitty4670
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02 Jul 2023, 7:08 pm

I get TONS of spam, emails, texts & phone calls. It’s easy with phone calls, I have silence on my iPhone, I don’t pick up if I don’t recognize the number, in my last apartment building, I had a landline phone & a cellphone, I always got marketing spam or telephone marketing, I got them on my landline, drove me CRAZY! I get texts from wrong numbers thinking I’m someone else, I don’t know it’s real or fake. I get emails pretending to be from Facebook too saying I been hacked, I also get bank emails from banks that I’m not with, I’m with Bank of America, they give advice on spam, the Do & Don’t.



Kitty4670
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02 Jul 2023, 7:10 pm

KitLily wrote:
Definitely spam. Delete at once. I've had loads of those.


Do you really need to delete right away?



KitLily
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03 Jul 2023, 1:56 am

Kitty4670 wrote:
KitLily wrote:
Definitely spam. Delete at once. I've had loads of those.


Do you really need to delete right away?


Yes because otherwise you might open your email when you're half asleep one morning/evening and click on it by accident. Safer to delete so that doesn't happen.


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Rossall
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07 Jul 2023, 12:30 pm

If you use Gmail their SPAM filter is very good I find.


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Kitty4670
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08 Jul 2023, 9:28 pm

KitLily wrote:
Kitty4670 wrote:
KitLily wrote:
Definitely spam. Delete at once. I've had loads of those.


Do you really need to delete right away?


Yes because otherwise you might open your email when you're half asleep one morning/evening and click on it by accident. Safer to delete so that doesn't happen.

My junk mail usually go to my spam folder.



Kitty4670
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08 Jul 2023, 9:33 pm

I hate getting porn emails stuff & stuff to make male thingy grow :lol:



Eurythmic
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09 Jul 2023, 12:26 am

I've had many emails from "Facebook" to a Hotmail address I've had since the 1990s.
Lost password, problems with account, trying to contact me urgently etc.
Looking at incoming mail which is sort of filtered and the rest of the debris in my Spam folder it's very obvious it's bulk produced rubbish. Some of the scams I've had lately are password reset requests from American banks I've never dealt with and a solicitor representing somebody I've never heard of calling me sir/madam about the 3.5 million dollar inheritance they have left me in their will. Pull the other one.

My Facebook account has never been associated with this email address.

Delete and ignore and move on.
People who know me know my name and how to get in touch.
Any phone caller who calls me Sir straight away gets asked what my name is.
If they don't know my name they don't know me.
Friends and family may call me by certain other names which we both know and I'll recognise their voices straight away.

Haven't had a Nigerian prince one in a while, no doubt they're just taking a break and will be back. The family resemblance between myself an a Nigerian is uncanny ;)



KitLily
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10 Jul 2023, 3:28 pm

Kitty4670 wrote:
I hate getting porn emails stuff & stuff to make male thingy grow :lol:


Oh god! I get those All.The.Time. It is so annoying isn't it! And emails saying that my horny neighbours want my body. :lol: :lol: I hope they don't! They are over 70 :lol:


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JustFoundHere
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29 Jul 2023, 4:47 pm

Rossall wrote:
If you use Gmail their SPAM filter is very good I find.


Gmail is very good at minimizing Spam. It might be helpful to avoid questionable Internet content, and even most social media sites - hence, this might be proactive in reducing spam.



ToughDiamond
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13 Aug 2023, 9:04 am

Kitty4670 wrote:
Do you really need to delete right away?

I don't worry about not deleting them, but then I've got my email client set to plain text, which is supposed to make it impossible for the sender to know whether I've opened it or not, and in the unlikely event that I did accidentally click a link (I don't have a smartphone and by the time I've powered up my computer I'm fairly wide awake), I've got the NoScript browser extension, which is said to stop most of the malice of web pages. And I regularly do a full system restore which completely overwrites the drive, thus wiping off most if not all the malware I might have picked up. It's also my policy never to click on an email link if there's a safer way of getting to the place it's supposed to link to, and even if there isn't, I'd at least examine the URL to see if it links to a domain known to be safe or not. It's also my policy to disbelieve any email telling me I have to "re-validate" an account, unless I know a good reason why it's likely genuine.

But obviously not everybody has my habits, so if you keep a smartphone by your bedside then you might be safer deleting suspicious emails.



swrider
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13 Aug 2023, 9:40 am

Cornflake wrote:

Any included links (do not click on them) will doubtless point to a convincingly realistic page inviting you to enter your existing account details.


This. It doesn't matter what the email is don't click on links type the website in yourself. The only possible exception is if you know a link is coming from a source, such as activation an account or reset password link, or a Dropbox from a friend who said they were sending it.



KitLily
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13 Aug 2023, 10:42 am

Where did Joe90 go, anyway? Did she leave WP?


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