I’m writing this post to share an incident that involved a friend of mine and the subsequent hi-jacking of his Hotmail account as well as his Facebook account, which indirectly involved me and everyone in his Hotmail contact list.

Earlier this week I received an email from him…let’s read:

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here to Liverpool,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

We’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in less than hours from now but having problem settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the bills,I’m freaked out at the moment.wondering if you could help us with a quick loan,promise to refund it as soon as i return back home.i promise

Reading this, I was unsure if it was my friend or not. We were pretty good friends in high school, which for me was more than 10 years ago, and had since only kept in contact through Facebook. It didn’t really seem like him, but not wanting to be a jerk in case it was him, I waited to reply. I wanted to check his Facebook page for more info as I didn’t realize he’d made a trek to Liverpool. Maybe I missed something.

While I was busy checking that out, “he” messaged me. It was the same sort of stuff the email stated. He was in Liverpool and he needed money. Before I could get anything meaningful out of the convo, he signed off. I sat dumbfounded and wrote this simple reply to his email:

yo man, wtf?

The reply which told me for sure it wasn’t him:

I’m so glad you replied back,i cant call or receive right now,due to the muggers have stolen away my mobile phone and i dont have access to the hotel caling facilities due to my bills as accumulated, I have nothing left on me right now and I was lucky to have my Life and passport with me it would have been worst if they had made away with my passports.Well i need a quick favor from you, I was wondering if you can lend me $1,500USD, i will appreciate what ever you can assist me with so that i can sort the hotel bills and get a cab to the Airport. You can have it wired to my name via Western Union. I promise to pay you back as soon as I get back home. Here’s my info below

Name – ****** *************
Location – 69 Lord Street Liverpool, L2 1TL,United Kingdom

I still have my passport so I can use it as identification, e-mail me the transfer details and the confirmation number include the amount
sent. Please let me know if you heading to Western Union..

It was a scam, obviously. Every single person in his contact list received this email and I’m sure at least one person thought very hard about actually sending him money.

This raises a bigger question-how did this person gain access to his password? He admittedly used the same password for his email and Facebook, but stated that his chosen password shouldn’t have been easily guessed even by people who knew him. Perhaps he provided extremely simple answers to his security questions (which incidentally I didn’t think of until just now), or he had some sort of key logger, or perhaps, and this is my theory, he had registered on a site that wasn’t secure and his password was lifted from there.

The bottom line is that we need to be more vigilant when it comes to internet security. With more and more types of viruses, spyware, etc., coming out everyday, it’s only a matter of time before something like this happens to the rest of us.

Being a huge fan of Lifehacker.com, here are some ways you can help protect yourself. I would have outlined them all here, but I didn’t decide until writing this post that I would include the emails that got sent my way.

What are some horror stories you guys have involving a situation like this?

Note – In order to receive any kind of phone support for Hotmail, one must have an X-box Live account. This seems kind of odd, but they simply will not talk to you about a free Hotmail account over the phone. Since X-box Live is tied to Hotmail via your Windows Live ID, it might be worth signing up for one even if you don’t need one just in case you need a situation like this resolved. You do not need an X-box to sign up for this. It’s a free account, which is also used to track your achievements with Game for Windows Live for your PC. Bottom line-if you use Hotmail, sign up for this regardless if you play video games or not.