Dear Arachnes, When you see that spam or fake distress messages are coming from someone's account, please do two things: 1. Ignore the message itself (don't reply to it). 2. Check that your own passwords are secure. The lace list has lots of safeguards against spammers on this list (one of the reasons that subscribing is such a pain, because you have to go through a confirmation process), but there is no protection from weak passwords! If you use an easily guessed password or use the same password for all your accounts, you are very vulnerable to being hacked!!
Of course, the trade-off is that if your password is really strong, it's more difficult to remember. Here's an article with tips for creating strong passwords that you can remember: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-strong-password-that-you-can-remember-easily/ I also use a free password keeper for passwords like my bank account, medical stuff, cellphone company, and credit card info. My current program is AnyPassword, an encrypted program with a master password, so you only have to remember one password. It sits on my local hard-drive and I keep a copy of the files at home and at work (Note: I do NOT store a copy on Dropbox!). You can download AnyPassword for free and it's very easy to use: http://www.anypassword.com/ Once I was on Facebook and someone opened a chat session with me. Would you believe that it was one of those "Help, I'm stuck in London, just got mugged, please send me money" messages from someone I hardly knew? I wrote back, "Sorry, find another victim." I got a smiley and then the low-life disappeared. Spammers and hackers tend to use the same wording and scams. If you're wondering whether someone might have sent a message and also whether their spelling and grammar might have deteriorated dramatically from stress, try googling some of the phrases. It's very likely that you'll find exactly the same words in a warning or report. Now what are the chances of your friend being in so much distress that he or she uses the same text as 100 other people? ;-) So go secure your accounts. Now. Please don't put it off. Identity theft is no joke. At best it's a nuisance and at worst it can cost you a lot of money. Avital Arachne Moderator - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
