Heather's Heavenly Vapes - THE BIG THREAD (Part 6)

PapawBrett

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Day 10 of Mamaw's two week vacation. Did three loads of laundry while Judy spent the day cleaning and straitening the kitchen. Tomorrow I get to make another trip into town, this time for dog food. And I need to be home a little early Friday to get Judy to the doctor's office. I tip my cap to single Moms. Although I don't know how many keep trucker hours on their day job, it is still an all day grind.
 

woita

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Good luck Bronze.
You can boot and run your puter from that Linux Mint DVD without installing anything (and touching anything on your hard drive that has been hacked).
If you have someone who can burn it for you, you could use that as an emergency sys.
(It runs from an USB stick, too btw).
 

Bronze

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Talked to Ms. Lori and Dusty tonight. They're geeks and I knew they could give me some guidance. Blabbed with Lori a bit and she went off to check some stuff for me then Dusty called and I spent two hours on the horn with him. So he went through a bunch of stuff. He feels it is relegated to my one email address (not necessarily a nefarious hacker but a spam bombardment). So he gave me a few things to do but I'm in a monitoring mode for a bit to see where this thing goes. If it persists then I may have to kill that email address. That would be a pain too. I called my stockbroker where all my money is and froze my accounts until this thing sorts itself out. PITA!!!

Lori and Dusty are awesome!
 

LAwaters

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For everyone else, here's what I just told Ed. Ugh with the hackers! Grrr.

1) Microsoft changed the behavior of that pop up and they are in trouble for it. That little red X no longer closes the upgrade, it schedules you for the upgrade! At whatever time is set by it. So that was not likely to be a hack.

Microsoft accused of Windows 10 upgrade 'nasty trick' - BBC News

2) The email flooding has been getting more common since 2012. DON'T OPEN THEM! They are phishing for a way into your private info and can attack just by opening. Another thing being reported is that the flood is because they have your PayPal or CC info and they are hiding any alerts you might get by flooding your email. Might want to contact CC's and PayPal or log into your accounts to look for fraudulent transactions and alert them. Another flooding done by these jerks is to call bomb you for the same reason - so you won't get the call from your financial institutions.
 

Bronze

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Just before 5PM my personal email inbox was inundated. I'm getting about 50 emails per minute (as fast as this computer can download them). It hasn't let up since. I have two email addresses with the same domain from my ISP. It has affected only one, not the other. So somehow that one email got compromised. Nothing else seems askew. Let me tell you, when this kind of crap happens it's like having your family jewels in a vice. It gets your attention and doesn't let go. All hands on deck!! After talking with Lori and Dusty I am feeling better that this isn't a computer-wide hack job. Not taking any chances though so I have/will contact anything that has to do with $$ just to get them all on alert. Since 98% of my loot is in one place I made sure I got that stuff frozen immediately when I saw this happening. Now I just have to go after the remaining 2%.

Heed Lori's advice. :)
 

Hulamoon

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You know, if you're gonna take an hour an fifteen minutes to do a full virus scan the last it can do is find something. Grrr!!

Are you running in safe mode Ed? Whose the provider of the email addy that's being inundated? If its a google/yahoo account, it should max out. Just let it go to hell. If it's a cable provider, then notify them. Maybe they can shut it down on their end. Otherwise for system probs, I run HijackThis in safe mode. Great little program and free too.

And needless to say, don't open a damn thing from any "official institution". Always go directly to their real website, or just pck up the phone and call them.
 

Bronze

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Are you running in safe mode Ed? Whose the provider of the email addy that's being inundated? If its a google/yahoo account, it should max out. Just let it go to hell. If it's a cable provider, then notify them. Maybe they can shut it down on their end. Otherwise for system probs, I run HijackThis in safe mode. Great little program and free too.

And needless to say, don't open a damn thing from any "official institution". Always go directly to their real website, or just pck up the phone and call them.
It's an account from my ISP. I don't touch any of those emails. I'm just gonna let it run itself out of gas. We'll see what it looks like in the morning. I'm bushed! Signing out. Nighty night Hula!
 

retic1959

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    By the way, Win 10 is good. Been using it since Dec and I'm glad I finally retired Win 7. But the methods are bad! If I didn't need Win I'd be on Linux with the rest of the outliers - who are growing in numbers! Yay! :)
    I don't miss the constant BS associated with Windows for 1 second , if I ever feel the need to play games on this computer and reinstall windows it'll be in a dual boot configuration with Linux and I will shut down all networking in windows period , I'd highly recommend dumping Windows to anyone that doesn't have a need for it . Linux won't stop an email bombardment but it's a hell of a lot harder to hack .
     

    retic1959

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    You know, if you're gonna take an hour an fifteen minutes to do a full virus scan the last it can do is find something. Grrr!!
    Bronze , if needs be , I will burn you a bootable Linux DVD , talk to Lori about it and let me know , I would need basic system info , specifically which cpu you're running and amount of Ram so I can get the right version for your system , no need to install it , it'll run off the DVD , it'll be slow that way but you can get things done without further compromising your computer .
     

    PapawBrett

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    Good Morning Army. What ever happened to "an honest day's pay for an honest day's work" ? Bronze, I feel for ya, buddy. These cheap little shysters who sit on their butts and try to find ways to steal online disgust me. At least in the old days, if you caught a thief you could mash their head in with something. There is another scam, one someone tried with me, where they call you posing as the IRS. I really do think the act of "sharing information" by major corporations (TWC, for example) should be declared a violation of your right to privacy. But that would make too much sense for these modern times....
    Sorry, too early for an old man rant.

    Have a Safe and Blessed Day :)
     

    Bronze

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    Bronze , if needs be , I will burn you a bootable Linux DVD , talk to Lori about it and let me know , I would need basic system info , specifically which cpu you're running and amount of Ram so I can get the right version for your system , no need to install it , it'll run off the DVD , it'll be slow that way but you can get things done without further compromising your computer .
    Thanks Ret. Duly noted. As it turns out this does not appear to be a Windows problem but it remains that Microsoft are :censored:holes. My email is still being bombarded at a rate of 1,000 emails per hour. I'm gonna let this ride till tomorrow morning and if it is still being bombarded then I will close that email account. That means anyone who has my email will have to be notified. Good luck to me trying to figure out who they all are. Then I have numerous online accounts that use email as the userID. I suspect I'll have to close/reopen all those accounts because I don't think they can change user IDs. I gotta get past this mess for now. PITA!!!
     

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