Bit of an odd Email incident

[Carruthers]

A couple of days ago I found an Email in the junk folder under the name of a neighbour.

I had a look at it and, although his name was correct, it came from an address I didn't recognise.

The content was a spam link apparently originating in Finland.

I ran both an AVG virus and a Malware Bytes check and nothing untoward was revealed.

Any ideas if my neighbour's address book has perhaps been compromised?

ETA This happened once before some months ago with an Email supposedly from a former work colleague and it's rather puzzling.

Any thoughts on the subject?

Ta!

[limey]

I sometimes get emails "from" people I know with no message but a clicky linky and, when I look closely at the email address it is clearly not theirs. I bin the emails and have given up wondering whose email has been compromised. Maybe my list of friends has been compromised at some point, or maybe these friends (some of whom have been dead for a few years now) are/were visiting dodgy sites.
Just don't click on the links (that is where the virus danger lies).
Cheers old bean!

[Carruthers]

Thanks, limey.

It's a bit of a strange one though, isn't it?

One avenue of thought is that the sender might be sending Emails which then pick a name from my own address book giving them some initial credibility.

All in all, a bit worrying.

[glatt]

Somebody may have had their email address book compromised.

Either you, or your neighbor, or a 3rd party who knows both of you. Or maybe you are both on some other neighborhood mailing list and that list was shared publicly. There are lots of different ways it can happen.

I organize blood drives at my church. My name and email address has appeared in the church bulletin so you can reach me to sign up for the drives. Every so often, I get an email from the priest, but from a fake account that doesn't belong to the priest. It's somebody who looks online at church bulletins, and makes note of all the email addresses they can find, and then looks up the name of the priest at that church, and then creates a dummy email account based on the priest's name, and then emails those people whose email they have harvested. It's a lot of work, but if you can find a little old lady who isn't too sophisticated, and convince her that the trustworthy priest is emailing her personally about making a donation to a trusted charity, you might be able to get a couple grand from members of each congregation before everyone at that church figures out what's going on.

[Carruthers]

Thanks glatt!

The gentleman in question runs a neighbourhood news group which has a wide circulation and his address book must have a substantial number of entries.
As you suggest, the root of the problem would seem to lie there.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Speaking of email... who is... I am.
I got an email to a Gmail account. They always put the subject and as much text as will fit on the one line of the inbox stack. But this email had a blank subject line and no text, it was just this cartoon...



The heading Gmail showed me was...



I noticed where the k in talk is hidden anyone would read that as talk but the robot could not.

Then I wondered if they went to the trouble of deciphering the picture because there was no text to use for a heading, or are the looking at all pictures for text?
If they are doing all of them is it for the NSA worried about nogoodniks sneaking secret plans with pictures of words?
Or Google just building the dossier they keep on me?

[Happy Monkey]

I'm guessing the non-Roman characters are from the spirals on her shirt?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah yes, good catch.

[Dude111]

I have gotton emails also from people I know that are spam......... I think the address was forged........

[tw]

Plenty of sources exist for those email addresses. Since the lady incharge of computer security for Equifax (and later for all Equifax security) was only a music major, then the Chinese easily collected information about all of us - including any email addresses that Equifax possessed. They had free and undetected access for months - if not a year.

Equifax promised protection for something less than a year. That was in 2017. You are still exposed - and they have no obligation to protect you.

Since George Jr's administration were only interested in a political agenda, then security on the government payroll database was unnecessary. Since that had no military value - according to those extremists. Chinese collected the name, social security numbers, salaries, security clearances, addresses (current and past), job title, etc of every employee (and spy) paid by the US government. A few years later, all American spies in China disappeared.

Email addresses can be obtained from so many sources. We know this. Somebody just broke into and stole data from Facebook. Since Facebook's reputation for security is pathetic. How much, what, and how long? This is Zuckerberg. His objective is only profits. So he is not about to be sufficiently honest. Even that could be the source of e-mail address theft.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

If they are doing all of them is it for the NSA worried about nogoodniks sneaking secret plans with pictures of words?

Nobody need put words in those pictures. It is called lossy compression. A picture can easily be changed (byte by byte) and you would never know the difference. Even undecipherable color pixel changes, that nobody would notice, can be secret messages or computer code to compromise your data. Pictures (ie lossy compression) can easily compromise computer security.