Advice for beating the hackers
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Re: "A billion zombie e-mail accounts on the loose", Letters, September 10.
Our hearts goes out to Jacques Bekaert after he lost his e-mail account to hackers, and also to his friend who lost money to the hackers’ racket.
Having your e-mail account stolen causes anxiety and fear. You lose all your mail and all your addresses. You can not then warn anyone, and you have lost control over a part of your life.
When it happened to one of us, last year, we immediately asked whether we had sent bank codes that could be used by the hackers. And what about my business posts? This problem is so big it could be regarded as the cancer of e-mail.
We can only repeat Mr Bakaert’s advice: Keep addresses in a safe personal place. (The crackers use computers that process millions of codes per minute – your password is not safe.)
Do not respond to strange telephone calls or e-mails. It can be extremely dangerous to do so.
Try to keep in contact with all e-mail friends overseas so they recognise the way you write. Most of these hackers send out standard messages that claim you are in another country.
While travelling, carry a small external hard drive containing your addresses.
Do not leave valuables in hold-baggage, especially coming in to Bangkok airports.
Paul Scott and Amolwan Barisri
