Hacking Alert

Getting ready to hack

From time to time, we send reminders about email fraud.  A common scheme is to get hold of someone's email password, typically in a commercial account such as Yahoo or gmail, and then send an email to all contacts in the account such as the one yours truly received today:

Hello!

I'm sorry you're getting the mail from me at this Point in time,my family and I came down here to kiev (Ukraine), for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel we stayed, all cash credit cards and cell were stolen off but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

I have been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves pretty soon from now but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills.  Please be so kind to reply back so I can tell you what to do and how to get some cash to us.

I'm freaked out at the moment

Never, ever reply to such communications by sending money.  Avoid simple passwords such as your name.  If you get suspicious emails, look for grammatical mistakes, e.g., "stolen off," since they tend to be from foreign sources.