Some people either have too much time on their hands or no sense – AND they need a moral checkup. Here you are, a nice person going about your business, and some nasty person who threw their moral compass into the toilet one day and hasn’t seen it since does something nasty to you.
The latest cyber vandalism attacks are coming through Skype.
The first time I heard of Skype, this is how it happened. An Australian client wrote, “Do you Skype?” in an amail.
I, with my finely sharpened wit, asked, “Not yet. Is it fun?” Then of course asked him what that meant. I was instantly excited about being able to chat up anyone in the world.
Skype is a great way to talk with people all over the world without incurring long distance charges.
Naturally, although most of us use our powers for good, there are people who use this tool for nefarious purposes. (sigh) I wish it wasn’t so.
Skype is now a verb, by the way, in case you didn’t know. “Skype me.” and “He Skyped me” are both perfectly valid sentences. So Skype has now joined the ranks of other company names that have become parts of speech, notably FedEx and Xerox.
Someone I didn’t know wrote me through Skype “I send you a link ok?” He sent me a link to click. I asked why. He said “it’s for me ok?” and I blocked him. He wouldn’t say what or why, and I didn’t know him. Seems I dodged a cyber vandal attack.
- Skype logo image
A savvy business owner friend of mine with a huge contact list got caught. Willie Crawford wrote about it on his blog. Apparently a friend of his known for sending cryptic messages sent him an email with a link. He, being a smart cookie, asked about it and was satisfied with the answer.
Apparently, my Skype account has been hi-jacked,
which means that my hundreds of Skype contacts
likely received a phishing message trying to get
you to click on a link, where upon you’ll be
prompted to log back into your Skype account,
and they will hijack the account(snip)Over the next hour or so, I got emails and phone callsfrom a dozen friends telling me that they think mySkype account has been compromised… and they basedthat upon the REALLY poor English in the Skype messagesthey were getting.
So even if you consider yourself smart and aware that these things happen, you could get caught. He has hundreds of contacts, so setting up a fresh account isn’t something he wants to contemplate.
Here is an excerpt from Marj Wyatt on the Get Income blog.
here is a dark side to Skype. Hackers prey on naive online users. Last year’s hacker game was to usurp an account and initiate contact with all confirmed contacts, inviting those people to accept files. Even though I do not consider myself to be naive, I was duped into accepting and opening a file, in March 2009, when a seemingly active client offered it to me. When I lost access to my Skype account, I realized I had been hacked. It took a few days to put everything back together and it was a real headache.I haven’t accepted any spontaneously offered files or clicked on any uninvited links since that time, even if the offer is extended by a long-term contact on my list.
This year’s hacker game is to hijack an account and offer a link that looks like a Skype link to all confirmed contacts in that account. With a slight amount of scrutiny, it is obviously not a link you should follow. The link will probably ask you to login to your Skype account, at which point the hacker has your credentials. If you have a Skype subscription attached to your PayPal account, the hackers can run up huge expenses for you. Skype takes no responsibility for this. Neither does PayPal.
The moral of this story? Think before you click.
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- WARNING – My Skype Account Was Compromised (williecrawford.com)
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