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Author Topic: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram  (Read 6150 times)

broadstairs

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #15 on: November 30, 2018, 05:20:29 PM »

I can understand what you are saying but I don't want this. All my email addresses have a single word before the @ and I expect anything different to be rejected, anything with a period or plus added is NOT Valid and MUST be binned.

Stuart
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #16 on: November 30, 2018, 05:58:51 PM »

Google don't ignore dots, they send them on. They don't remove them. Other email providers do the same.

Ok, maybe I didn’t explain it clearly.

Imagine an addressee, JohnSmith@....  Now, if an email is addressed JohnBSmith@... then obviously, it would not get delivered to the first John, because it has an extra character ‘B’, so is a different Mr Smith.

So far as I am aware, the dot is just another valid character in the local part of email addressbefore the ‘@‘ so by the same reasoning, JohnSmith and John.Smith are different addresses, as one has an extra character.   The fact that character is a dot is no different than it were a letter or other valid character.   So far as I am aware, gmail is unique in treating the dot as a special case.

It would maybe not be a bad idea for Google to ignore these dots for the purposes of account registration, such that once JohnSmith had registered, when John.Smith tried to register he would find the address “unavailable”.  Or vice versa of course, if John.Smith had got there first.    But they seem to go one step further, and actually deliver the mail regardless of whether the account holder specified dots.   I don’t have any accounts to play with, but I did think gmail was unique in this respect, of ignoring dots.
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Weaver

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #17 on: December 01, 2018, 07:19:32 AM »

And in my email, if someone sends an email to we.aver@example.com instead of to weaver@example.com then the email will get binned because it does not match anything and I have catch-all turned off, not set up to point to any mailbox in particular. I use Andrews and Arnold’s email service now, with my own domain names.
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d2d4j

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #18 on: December 01, 2018, 09:40:07 AM »

Hi

I think 7LM is correct

The email addresses are created to stop other users registering them, so 3 I think but only 1 is an actual email account, and the other 2 will be aliases to the main email account registered.

Clearly if you use your own domain for emails, you have more control (subject to the ESP control panel), to create as you need.

The reason for alias email is to make sure you receive email where the sender had made a mistake, such as andrew@ and alias andy@ or sean@ and alias shaun@

If you have multiple domains, and prefer to use a single primary email, you could, subject to provider, create domain email aliases

Many thanks

John
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broadstairs

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #19 on: December 01, 2018, 10:34:10 AM »

Well having taken a look at Gmail and found there is no easy way for me to have my emails handled the way I require I will be deleting my Gmail account. I don't care how much Google think this is ok it in my view is plain wrong to ignore users who do not want this. I had no idea about this until I got the original mail which started this thread. I use Krystal for my email and have it reject any email not correctly addressed which is exactly what I require. If people cannot correctly address mail then tough.

Stuart
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #20 on: December 01, 2018, 11:02:41 AM »

I have come around to seeing things your way, Stuart.    Initially, my view less sympathetic, that it was  an innocent feature that might be useful.  But as your scam has shown, it appears that feature can be exploited by hackers.   By creating the illusion that they are somehow controlling email addresses, they can probably draw in more suckers.

I think best policy would be for gmail to make the feature optional, but to default to “strict addressing”.   That would ensure that non-techies who live with defaults would be protected from such scams.    Just my view though, and I won’t delude myself that Google might take any notice of me. :D

I do actually use gmail indirectly as my domains’ email are hosted by G suite, I managed to register while it was just “Google Apps” and free.  Since I have set up complicated rules for catch-alls for undeliverables, it is not easy to contrive experiments to see whether my own mail has the same feature, my catch-alls would do much the same anyway.
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broadstairs

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #21 on: December 02, 2018, 09:35:44 AM »

Well I have now deleted my gmail account. The issue I wondered about was the google account used for things like Android because I was unable to change the primary email address from my gmail account. However on deleting the gmail account it very kindly allowed me to provide a new email address to use with the google account so hopefully it will all work out OK and I'm free of gmail now  ;D

I now need to check on what I used that email address for but I'm pretty sure it was not much. At least now I will not see any mail unless correctly addressed and it passes my servers spam checking which seems very good on Krystal.

Stuart
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Ronski

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #22 on: December 02, 2018, 10:35:42 AM »

I did wonder if you had an Android phone/tablet, interesting to hear they allow you to use a different email address but will that work with other Google things like cloud like backup for contacts etc.
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broadstairs

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #23 on: December 02, 2018, 10:40:47 AM »

Yes having added the new email address when deleting the Gmail one this new email becomes the existing login for the Google account and I can see all my android purchases and downloads from play just fine.

Stuart
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j0hn

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #24 on: December 02, 2018, 01:41:43 PM »

That's not the same as Ronski was talking about.
Check the Accounts > Google > Sync for apps like Contacts, Calendar, Photos, etc.

Do they still sync and back up? Google gives you 15GB storage for drive, Photos etc with a Google account.

It's possible to keep using that Google account on the tablet for those features but not use it for email.
Disable sync on gmail app
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broadstairs

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Re: New (to me) scam attempt to hack Instagram
« Reply #25 on: December 02, 2018, 02:27:10 PM »

I never used the Gmail app, my Gmail account was attached to another mail app.  All backups are local, I don't use any cloud type apps for anything. Only thing I allow to backup are contacts to the Google account and that still works. Prior to deleting Gmail I checked and there was zero data.

Stuart
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