I never thought it would happen to us. I send and receive emails from friends and family and pass along interesting things when I get them. I got a call from a Deacon from my church. The pastor is on vacation out of state, and had called to check up on me. He had received an email from my email address, saying I had made an unexpected trip to London, was mugged at gunpoint, was on my way back home, but needed him to wire me $1500 to an address in London to help me get home. Several others in my email mailbox got the same email. At least they called to check up on me! Being partly handicapped, it was unlikely that I had made a trip out of country, but it was special knowing that they were looking out for me!
Our account is through AT&T/Yahoo, so I got on the phone. I had to change my email password, go in and change the password access on the modem as well, and spent about 3 hours conversing with a very nice tech support woman in India! She had me download a malware scan program which found a trojan. It had been a long time since I had seen one of those, I had gotten complacent! I ended up opening a new email account, emailing all of my mailbox to notify them, AFTER telling them of the scam and apologizing for any trouble. An interesting half day I will gladly not repeat.
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