Inform your Friends about their Hacked Accounts

Every so often I receive an email from someone I know; it talks about something completely random, and almost always includes a link at the end. The same thing sometimes happens on MSN and I get a message like this:

(12:02:36 PM) Friend: Hey! My cat had a spastic fit, and then coughed up a hairball! Check it out!

Now, whether or not that link goes to a malware site, or just someplace for you to buy viagra is not the point. You don’t click on suspicious-looking links… do you?

In some cases they may have simply fallen for a phishing attack, and typed in their credentials where they shouldn’t have. They may even have been hacked due to weak secret questions. More often than not however – and you see this a lot with Hotmail/MSN users – what’s happened is that they logged into their email or MSN on an infected computer, which recorded their credentials. In either of these scenarios the info back to its HQ, where it starts being used to send out spam/viruses/porn/more porn/younameit.

The best solution is to simply change the password (and secret questions) for the account in question. Be a friend, and tell them that they’ve been 0wned.

[Updated 19/01/2011]