Email Hijacking

Shortly after darling daughter left on her grand adventure, we got an email from her telling us she was stranded in London and to please send her some money. It was obvious it wasn't from her, somebody had obviously hacked her account and were using it to scam the unwary. My first thought was the North Koreans: following their fearless leader's advice and uncanny leadership abilities, they had contrived to break into the Yahoo email server and were targeting my daughter's account. Then I did a little more checking and realized that the world is full of hackers who are into this kind of thing, so maybe it isn't the North Koreans. (No Mr. President, I think we can call off nuclear retaliation.)

Then I did a little more checking and I realized she had probably used someone else's computer to access her account, and that computer was infected with spyware! OMG! Freak out! Run in circles, scream and shout! Download Spybot Search & Destroy and run a scan, ASAP!

Monday morning I finally got around to talking to one of the people in charge of this expedition and he put a completely different spin on it. He tells me that kids often forget to log out after accessing their account on a computer in an internet cafe. Someone came along after her, saw her account was still open and made up a this message on the spot, just for amusement's sake. I don't think they really expect to get any money from it. The address they put in the message does not seem to be valid. Maybe I'll send them a note and see if it gets returned.