Warning, possibly hijacked artist account - lilstiney / Josie Murray

[foxhack.livejournal.com]

A long time ago I commissioned lilstiney (otterfox) for some icons. That went very well, and as such, I am not posting a warning about her. No, this is a warning because it appears that her email has been hijacked.

I just got some spam from her account; so, if you dealt with her in the past, you might be getting some weird emails from her account, josie.murray AT gmail dot com. I have no way of contacting her anymore (the email lists a phone number, but I am outside the US) and I am weary of replying to her email, for fear of getting bombarded with spam from whoever got the account.

I am in no way denouncing this artist, she did right by me a few years back with some icons which I absolutely adored, but I'm just letting people know about this situation so they're on the lookout in case someone tries to scam them using her name or email.

Comments

[kyrahlynn.livejournal.com]

artkyn is her current username, and I believe she's a member of AB so hopefully she'll see this post. You may want to message her just in case, though, since LJ posts can be easy to miss if one's busy.

[foxhack.livejournal.com]

I just left her a message in her most recent post, hopefully she'll get her account back!

Thanks.

[rhianna-muir.livejournal.com]

Just a quick question - how do you know it's from her email account? I could put From: bill@microsoft.com in the headers of my emails, that doesn't mean I've hacked Bill Gates' email account.

There are lots of bots that do this, so many that SpamCop has mentioned this happening in their FAQs. So, we can only hope it's not as bad as it seems!

Thanks.

[foxhack.livejournal.com]

Simple. I have a Gmail address - and Gmail said the spam was sent from a legitimate Gmail account. This is the easiest way to get around Gmail's spam protection, since the address was never flagged for spam. It only works for a very short while, but that's usually enough. :(

And Josie has confirmed that it was hacked, see her comment below.

[artkyn.livejournal.com]

Hey guys, just wanted to apologize to anyone that received any suspicious emails from me--my account was indeed hacked. I changed my password, but other than that I'm not really sure what I can do to protect myself or those in my address book. This is the second time this has happened this summer, so I'm a little at a loss.

Thanks for giving people a heads up, Foxhack--I hate to think of anyone using my identity to take advantage of people!

Yesterday a friend of mine had this happen to her account as well. I didn't receive an email from her, but it was the same kind of thing--where they used her account to email links to everyone in her address book.

[mpd-84.livejournal.com]

you both checked your computers for key loggers and other malicious software right?

[artkyn.livejournal.com]

I have Norton, and they always inform me of suspicious activity. But I didn't think to run a scan, I think I shall do that now.

[uozlulu.livejournal.com]

If you don't have one already, I'd suggest investing in a security software or freeware. I've had a lot of success with Avast anti-virus, which is free and can be downloaded from filehippo.

Another thing you can do is to tell your computer to never remember a password in your browser.

[artkyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks, good tips! I do have security software, so hopefully that will help. I hope it's not keyloggers... =/

[uozlulu.livejournal.com]

Me too D: Key loggers are horrible.

Spybot SD is a good spyware cleaner too.

I try to stick to freeware since some stuff you can buy from like Best Buy tries to make you repay the $50 or so for it every so often and I just can't afford it XD

[artkyn.livejournal.com]

I've generally had pretty good luck with Norton. I bought the Best Buy "Spysweeper" but it made my computer so laggy and was way intrusive, I couldn't stand it. Norton you have to renew every year, but I think it's worth it for the fact that it doesn't produce fifty billion warning popups about this or that every time I use my computer. I really like the way it stays pretty well in the background and just does its thing.

[uozlulu.livejournal.com]

Our Norton bought from Best Buy tends to run out after 2 - 3 years and then dad won't go buy a new one because he thinks it still works even when the notice saying it won't unless you pay more money comes up repeatedly. It's part of why I had to switch to freeware.

[artkyn.livejournal.com]

How frustrating! Yeah, outdated virus protection is no bueno.

[foxhack.livejournal.com]

Um... you might want to check it out again. I just got another spam message from your account. :(