Your Pass
Related Articles
A New Hampshire woman who had thousands of dollars stolen from a cryptocurrency account is sharing her story to prevent others from being hacked. The woman, who asked to use only her first name, Michelle, said she thought she had done everything she needed to do to stay safe, but her hacking nightmare started with a click on her phone . “It said, ‘Update Samsung Account,’ and I pressed it, and I think that’s what it was,” she said. “Within about an hour, my phone broke down.” Michelle said her cellular service provider got her phone working, but when she logged into one of the four cryptocurrency accounts, it was empty. “That’s about $15,000 that disappeared, just like that,” she says. She asked her provider to restore emails that might have been deleted, and that’s when she saw withdrawals. in,” Michelle said. Michelle said the hacker was unable to access two other accounts, but gained access to a third, which is now frozen. He sent her a ransom note, and thousands more dollars are now in limbo. Experts said Michelle’s click likely installed malicious code. Cyber Defense Media Group’s James Gorman said. “She was hit with the equivalent of a thug walking down the street and stealing her purse.” Cybercriminals have access to sophisticated tools, Gorman said. “You can rent this technology. You can rent this technology. You can create this technology,” he said. “It’s all out there on what we call the dark web.” He said it’s important for people to take precautions, including using tough passwords guessing, varying them, and using multi-factor authentication whenever possible.”You can make yourself harder to hack by thinking before you click and keeping your software and operating systems up to date,” Gorman said. I was like, if they can do this to me, I want to let people know you’re never safe,” Michelle said. Experts said if credit cards or bank accounts were involved, all lost funds would likely be recoverable. With cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, funds could be lost. Anyone who thinks they are the victim of an online crime can report it to the FBI.
A New Hampshire woman who had thousands of dollars stolen from a cryptocurrency account is sharing her story to prevent others from being hacked.
The woman, who asked to use only her first name, Michelle, said she thought she had done everything she needed to do to stay safe, but her hacking nightmare started with a click on her phone .
“It said, ‘Samsung Account Update’ and I pressed it, and I think that’s what it was,” she said. “Within about an hour, my phone broke down.”
Michelle said her cellular service provider got her phone working, but when she logged into one of the four cryptocurrency accounts, it was empty.
“That’s about $15,000 that disappeared, just like that,” she said.
She asked her provider to restore emails that might have been deleted, and that’s when she saw withdrawals.
“He would know my account screen name, forget the password, they would email the password, then he would get it and he would get in,” Michelle said.
Michelle said the hacker was unable to access two other accounts, but did gain access to a third, which is now frozen. He sent her a ransom note, and thousands more dollars are now in limbo.
Experts said Michelle’s click likely installed malicious code.
“And when you do that, then you open up your phone to be available to anyone, anywhere and for anything,” said James Gorman of Cyber Defense Media Group. “She was hit by the equivalent of a thug walking down the street and stealing her purse.”
Cybercriminals have access to sophisticated tools, Gorman said.
“You can rent this technology. You can rent this technology. You can create this technology,” he said. “It’s all out there on what we call the dark web.”
He said it was important for people to take precautions, including using hard-to-guess passwords, changing them and using multi-factor authentication where possible.
“You can make yourself harder to hack by thinking before you click and keeping your software and operating systems up to date,” Gorman said.
“I was like, if they can do this to me, I want people to know you’re never safe,” Michelle said.
Experts said that if credit cards or bank accounts were involved, any lost funds would likely be recoverable. With cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, funds could be lost.
Anyone who thinks they are the victim of an online crime can report it to the FBI.
