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Sunday 20 April 2014

Mass hack at AOL

Something has gone badly wrong with AOL email addresses. I've recently started getting a lot of spam emails from people with AOL addresses, who have my email address in their address list (or maybe they received an email from me in the past). Each email is sent to a dozen or two people, and consists of a link to a web site.

My guess is that this is the result of a password-guessing attempt. Many people use the same username and password on multiple sites, so that if one of those sites is compromised and the password published, then they all are.

I've been responding to each email with an email back, telling them that they have a problem, and should change their AOL password, and check their system for malware.

Of course, nearly all of them ignore my advice.

3 comments:

  1. I've seen the same. I've emailed all my AOL friends (not too many I'm pleased to say) and like you, I've had nothing back from them. The next email will be to say I'm blocking their account until they email me through a new one! :)

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  2. I'm still getting around a dozen per day. One of them replied to my email, he said that AOL is aware of the problem.

    I wonder if they really are?

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  3. I blocked aol addresses a long time ago along with yahoo

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