This handcarved wooden boat and figurine - along with cases of vintage wine, an Alexander Calder hanging mobile and two robots - are among the diverse items for sale at an upcoming auction in our neighbourhood.
A Canadian drug company has broken into my rarely-used Yahoo.co.uk account and is sending bogus email purporting to be from "parisparfait@yahoo.co.uk." I rarely use the Yahoo account, other than a couple of times per month when checking for email from readers who never noticed my change of email address.
As of today I have closed this account; if you email me there, your message will be lost in cyberspace. But the Canadian company/sleazy spammer may have accessed my address book. If you receive email purporting to be from "parisparfait@yahoo.co.uk" please DO NOT OPEN IT: delete any such messages as spam. My email address associated with Paris Parfait is here. For future reference, the email address is linked on my sidebar.
Have you experienced similar incidents of your email account being hacked into or someone stealing your password and personal information?
no I've never had that problem myself but it sure is scary...
Posted by: Amy | 28 January 2008 at 08:39
That is horrible!
:/
Posted by: amber | 27 January 2008 at 18:54
How distressing - I'm so sorry that happened to you, Tara! I receive so much spam e-mail on my yahoo account already - but none claiming to be from you so far. I will keep an eye out for that. What a shame... It's rather frightening to think people are out there hacking into our personal e-mail accounts - but after what happened with my blog last month, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
Thank you for the warning!~ xo
Posted by: tinker | 27 January 2008 at 09:51
Now I wonder. I did get an email from myself, at dasilva0666@rogers.com, and thought that was weird. It was from a drug company.
Too weird~! I use the address you see displayed here, but it points to the rogers account. I hope this isn't the case, as this is my business email.
Yikes!
I'll be careful if I see that yahoo account from you.
xo
Gillian
Posted by: Gillian @ Indigo Blue | 27 January 2008 at 03:36
I had a similar experience about 7 or 8 years ago also through a yahoo account. Someone in Canada had gotten ahold of my account and was using it to get money or something. Someone from Yahoo's fraud dept. contacted me.
I also had a problem with a myspace account. Worst of all I've had my purse stolen and it happened to be a day I had my Soc. Sec. card in my address book, which I never carry. I had been out of town the day before and had forgotten to take it out. I still have to watch my credit in case that info. is floating around.
Nothing but headaches!
Your evening in Paris shot is lovely..I look forward to seeing more sunsets like that as the weather improves:)
Posted by: DuBuhDuDesigns | 27 January 2008 at 03:15
i do receive regular spam in my mail, blocking them however not succeeding in removing.
when are these global laws coming along to protect us from this crab??
il ove the boat tara!! perhaps very decorative as a planter, filled with early new spring or summer bloom for your terrace??
Posted by: marita | 27 January 2008 at 00:23
I forget what those programs are called -- they're malicious little bits of programming that use any address to generate spam but can also copy your address book and generate spam to everybody on it if the spy program is sent directly to you and you open it. They are usually annoyance viruses -- essentially harmless -- and often created by little smarty-pants student hackers at schools. We went through a bout with them at a university here. REALLY annoying, especially when you get bizarre-o e-mails bounced back to you that were sent to somebody using your address.
Posted by: fleur | 26 January 2008 at 23:42
Just found your site while visiting Paris for a couple of weekends right now - good stuff.
FYI, unless you know for sure that they contacted people in yoru address book, it's entirely possible that they only *pretended* to send spam from you, and in fact were not evening accessing yahoo servers in the first place.
It should be relatively easy to determine just by looking at the 'headers' (technical hidden portion) of the e-mails in question.
Posted by: Krupo | 26 January 2008 at 21:57
It's safe to say you have far more interesting neighborhood sales than I encounter! Sometimes I think if I see one more primary-colored, oversized plastic kids' stove, bedding that really should be sized down to rags or a tarp and clothes not old enough to be vintage and not current enough to wear, I'll scream!
Thanks for the warning on the bogus company. Really appreciate your sharing that with us.
Posted by: Jeanie | 26 January 2008 at 20:57
Yuck! that's horrible. I had my ebay account hacked into once, and the hacker (from the U.K. -- go figure), bid for a CAR from a U.S. dealer on my behalf. I immediately went into "change password-notify eBay" mode. Then the car dealer and I sorted it out. I also closed my old email account which I'd had for years because the amount of spam was ridiculous, and had gotten so smutty of late that I couldn't believe it.
I have a picture ID and everything I can think of in my yahoo log in now. This is the ugly side of the Internet.
Posted by: Colette | 26 January 2008 at 18:16
It's shameful and I'm ashamed that it was a Canadian drug company doing this. I've had a lot of garbage mail for drugs, for things to make my male appendage larger (which is interesting to say the least) and I'll get the odd mail that has the name of someone I know -- or a part name. I have had things that have an old email account I had -- using that name, or mail sent to me using my name in the subject line.
There is just way too much of this going on but to actually hack into an email account...this is getting scary.
Are we safe anywhere really?
Posted by: Cherie | 26 January 2008 at 16:45
I got so much spam mail from those weird Canadian drug companies and also spam where the words were all jumbled and made no sense! Since I have been on hotmail..only one spammer got through! Someone got on Kate's Yahoo and sent around phishing scams,,saying they were her and needed help..send money!!!!! yikes!
Posted by: Pam Aries | 26 January 2008 at 16:16
It hasn't happened to me (yet!) but it happened to a friend of mine recently - everyone suddenly got an email from her, supposedly volunteering (likely enough) in Nigeria (cue alarm bells) and urgently requiring several thousand euros to bail her out. Ho hum.
Posted by: Passementerie | 26 January 2008 at 15:51
How horrible!! You're wise to tell every one you know!! You probably already did this, but maybe you could also send a mass email to all of your email addresses too! What seems curious is how could someone know your password. Do you think it was hacked???? Or did someone you know, know your password?
Thinking good thoughts for YOU!
xox
Contance
Tara responds:
Constance, thank you. I did not send a mass mailing to all my email addresses, as the bogus company has probably already sent email purporting to be me. No one other than I knew my password. As the password was obscure, my theory is that the spammer hacked into my account or into Yahoo.co.uk.
Posted by: rochambeau | 26 January 2008 at 14:43