Hacked account

RetiredUSNChief

RetiredUSNChief

Get over it, snowflake.
Charter Life Member
Multi-Factor Enabled
Joined
Dec 17, 2016
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Location
SC to VA
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My account was just hacked tonight. Fortunately, it was caught very early. Unfortunately, someone here may have lost some cash on a fake sale.

I'll deal with that later.

Here's the sequence of events as they happened:

I'm working a night shift for the next couple weeks. I got in, settled down, set up my work computer and looked at what dayshift left for me. Had a few minutes, so I tried logging in on CFF to see what's up. Couldn't do it. Tried several times, no luck. Got an "Incorrect password" notice each time, though I know I wasn't making any errors in that. Figured it might be a glitch or something.

Went to check my email figuring I'd come back later and try again. That's when I noticed I had an email from CFF at 4:59 PM that said the following:


Your email at CarolinaFirearmsForum was recently changed to [email protected]. If you made this change, you may ignore this message.
If you did not request this change, please log in and change your password and email address. If you are unable to do this, please contact an administrator.
Your email was changed by the IP 193.176.84.193.


Well...I couldn't contact an admin because I was locked out of my account. So I texted @GoWolfpack to intercede for me in doing this. Meanwhile, I registered a new account (Problem Child) with the express purpose of using it to contact an admin person. However, that quickly got banned because I registered it under my original email address which was, of course, associated with RetiredUSNChief.

While this was going on, I looked back in my email account and noticed a conversation notice from @frakncylons, which was time stamped at 4:56 PM (right before my email change notification) :


Hey chief I'll take the light. I can do PP FF


Uh-oh...not only am I hacked, but the guy wasted no time posting scam sales under my account.

I called GoWolfpack, who immediately searched my profile and found all such threads and posted a notice that my account had been hacked. Shortly afterwards, those threads had been deleted, and presumably my account locked by admin.

@amnesia took very quick action to get me back into my account during all this, for which I'm grateful.


THE DAMAGE:

I'm not quite sure the ultimate amount of fiscal damage people have suffered. I have four conversation notices in my account that I just followed up on to give them notice. Amnesia apparently took action to notify people, too. I hope any who set up a transaction can successfully dispute it and save their hard earned money. I believe only one may have lost something on this debacle.


THANK YOU to Amnesia and GoWolfpack for your rapid assistance with this. More people coulda been screwed if they hadn't responded so quickly.
 
No harm here @RetiredUSNChief. Thankfully, it was due to my own incompetence. I entered the info in wrong and "you" got very pushy for me to fix it, as I suppose you can see in the PM.

I hope this was the extent of damage done to you.

I don't want to pry so don't feel obligated to answer...any tips for the rest of us on how to avoid what happened to you?
 
frakncylons said:
No harm here @RetiredUSNChief. Thankfully, it was due to my own incompetence. I entered the info in wrong and "you" got very pushy for me to fix it, as I suppose you can see in the PM.

I hope this was the extent of damage done to you.

I don't want to pry so don't feel obligated to answer...any tips for the rest of us on how to avoid what happened to you?
Click to expand...
We support two factor on the site.
 
frakncylons said:
No harm here @RetiredUSNChief. Thankfully, it was due to my own incompetence. I entered the info in wrong and "you" got very pushy for me to fix it, as I suppose you can see in the PM.

I hope this was the extent of damage done to you.

I don't want to pry so don't feel obligated to answer...any tips for the rest of us on how to avoid what happened to you?
Click to expand...

Actually, you're part of the reason why action was taken so quickly. After I read the notice my email account had been changed, then noticed your PM notification just 3 minutes before this, it was readily apparent the guy had not changed the email address until AFTER you sent your PM. Which really impressed on me how quickly I needed action to be taken.
 
Right now, it looks like only one person may have actually lost some money on this, and he's working with his bank to cancel the transaction (since PayPal can't/won't under his particular circumstance).

So it looks like his loss may actually end up being pretty minimal. Even so, I'll soften that for him.

The world is full of *ss****** and idiots, but sometimes it involves people who can help mitigate their actions some.
 
By the way...reading through the PMs that had happened during this, it was readily apparent that we weren't dealing with an English major.

Apparently, some noticed that things were "off" from how people knew me to be on this site, which turned them off from any dealings.

Kinda nice to know people here know me well enough to recognize that!
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
By the way...reading through the PMs that had happened during this, it was readily apparent that we weren't dealing with an English major.

Apparently, some noticed that things were "off" from how people knew me to be on this site, which turned them off from any dealings.

Kinda nice to know people here know me well enough to recognize that!
Click to expand...


I may be going out on a limb here but this may apply to quite a few members here. We should all be wary if we get poorly worded PM's.

.
 
Damn, these scammers are getting a little crafty. Glad to hear you were able to jump on it quickly and the only loss is minimal.

Considering the number of data leaks out there, 2FA is probably a good idea despite the annoyance that it is day to day.
 
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Whoa whoa whoa, so you posted stuff for sale, people agreed to take it, then you backed out? Man, I never thought youd flake like that, negative feedback thread?





I kid, of course.
Wild they are hacking accounts on forums like that to scam. These folks, if they put their energy to legitimate things they could probably make much more money.

Im glad you caught this quickly and thankfully due to the 'family' atmosphere of the site, yoou had contact methods outside of the forum to get this handled quickly.
 
Also @RetiredUSNChief out of curiosity did you reuse a strong unique password on this site or might you have shared it and the same email across multiple sites?

On my automotive forum, we've had a recent run of account takeovers of older accounts where members had a similar issue, but they didn't try to sell once hijacked - posted spam.
 
Another request. When something like this happens, PLEASE hit Report. Posting a message in all of the hacked member’s thread doesn’t help near as much as hitting Report so we can put a stop to it faster.
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
Right now, it looks like only one person may have actually lost some money on this, and he's working with his bank to cancel the transaction (since PayPal can't/won't under his particular circumstance).

So it looks like his loss may actually end up being pretty minimal. Even so, I'll soften that for him.

The world is full of *ss****** and idiots, but sometimes it involves people who can help mitigate their actions some.
Click to expand...
It's all good, save the money. I've come out ahead from this great community even with the $20 lost. Where else am I going to find someone to buy a used safariland holster or help to reassemble my cz sear cage.

I just assumed you were some old guy using talk to text. I'm a naive child though 😂
 
DaveInCLT said:
Also @RetiredUSNChief out of curiosity did you reuse a strong unique password on this site or might you have shared it and the same email across multiple sites?

On my automotive forum, we've had a recent run of account takeovers of older accounts where members had a similar issue, but they didn't try to sell once hijacked - posted spam.
Click to expand...

This particular email only gets used on sites I feel are trustworthy. Others get my token "spam email account".

And my email account password itself is unique.
 
Squanchy said:
It's all good, save the money. I've come out ahead from this great community even with the $20 lost. Where else am I going to find someone to buy a used safariland holster or help to reassemble my cz sear cage.

I just assumed you were some old guy using talk to text. I'm a naive child though 😂
Click to expand...

It's a great community for a reason. Keep me posted and you and I will come to an agreement in keeping with that!
 
So...have you gone through your rolodex, and checked for where you use a similar password to what you used here?


The War Wagon said:
:mad:

View attachment 371706
Click to expand...
CcECE8IW8AA8IGP
 
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Squanchy said:
It's all good, save the money. I've come out ahead from this great community even with the $20 lost. Where else am I going to find someone to buy a used safariland holster or help to reassemble my cz sear cage.

I just assumed you were some old guy using talk to text. I'm a naive child though 😂
Click to expand...

It's a great community for a reason. Keep me posted and you and I will come to an agreement in keeping with that!
 
Get Off My Lawn said:
@RetiredUSNChief did you have a simple password?
I’m now going to change mine.
Click to expand...

Common Words Random Password Creator

A secure tool for generating strong random passwords based on common words in the English language.
passwordcreator.org

Here's the common words generated for me:
  • plate joe browse kelp doze
  • music petrol tearing air thanks
  • partial therapy listens hunt montage
  • suits lit hereby shaking dating
  • steel pumps messing pins idiom
  • mickey stamped bushel inches amp
  • heroine faults elders females after
  • scam dollar plains ceded razor
  • woo jane forgot belongs rub
  • strife fibres deal fairly sloping
Click to expand...

I pick four that are easy to remember:
thanks mickey therapy scams
Click to expand...
Capitalize, and add numbers and symbols between, in this case, the year of the Soviet Union collapse and the same symbol each, in this case, $:
Also, just the words separated:
Thanks1$Mickey9$Therapy9$Scams1$

Thanks_Mickey_Therapy_Scams
Click to expand...

Test against password strength tester:

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How strong are your passwords? Test how secure they are using the My1Login Password Strength Test.
passwordmonster.com passwordmonster.com

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Quick and easy way to make a strong password that's easy to write, easy to remember, and secure.
 
Gator said:
I may be going out on a limb here but this may apply to quite a few members here. We should all be wary if we get poorly worded PM's.

.
Click to expand...
have you seen how people type around here???
 
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