Hackers pose as senator in email fraud bid

Update: This story originally said that hackers had attempted to scam a US Senator. The target was actually an Iowa state senator. Fraudsters attempted to scam a state senator's contacts after breaking into his webmail account. Contacts of Bob Dvorsky, an Iowa state senator, received a message from his Yahoo account claiming …

[JRallo]

Why oh why is he using Yahoo..?

Why? Just Why? His broadband provider didn't have anything? Didn't want to use BobDvorsky.com address (which is, btw, available)?

Took 2 seconds to find>

http://www.iowasenatedemocrats.org/dvorsky/contact.htm

I can only guess that someone spent 2 minutes in Google to find his 'security' answers and broke into his account.

Hack? Not really, just people knowing how to Google is my guess.

[Anonymous John]

Move along. Nothing to see here.

It's a very common scam. Send out loads of phishing emails, and you are bound to catch a few politicians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots

ALL of them.

[L1feless]

One idiot....

...ought to know more idiots right?

[Michael Leibensperger]

US Senator != Iowa state senator

Just an editorial tip for UK staff... a "US Senator" is one of 100 people who get to grandstand on national TV, work with (or against) the President on national legislation, spend far too much of their time fundraising, and have an opportunity for dabbling in moral hypocrisy on a grand scale. In contrast, an "Iowa state senator" has a degree of influence in Iowa, no doubt, but for most of the rest of the nation he is just "some guy from Iowa".

Cheers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Help I am a former US President cruelly trapped in

1865. I need £45,000 (FORTY FIVE THOUSAND GREAT POUNDS BRITISH) to pay for various in- flight drinks, theatre tickets etc. Please forward the cash to my Nigerian assistant. Yours faithfully Abraham J Lincoln

Sheesh...

[Apocalypse Later]

Scotland

My relative in the US had her gmail account hacked, and everyone in the address book was asked to wire emergency funds to Scotland. We tried to interest the police in stinging the hackers (wire money, pick up whoever collects it), but they couldn't be bothered. Wonder if it is the same people. Maybe a US Senator can get a little enforcement action, but I suppose not, as we are hearing the story without any arrests announced.

[Anonymous John]

No chance, and the police know it.

Western Union and Moneygram payments can be picked up anywhere in the world. Imagine asking the Nigerian police to stake out loads of WU outlets in Lagos. When the WU agent possibly gets a percentage for not querying why a US senator who looks strangely Nigerian is in his shop.

[Apocalypse Later]

Anywhere?

Are you saying that if one wires money to a specific location (I was given an address in Scotland) it can be picked up at any Western Union worldwide? That doesn't seem likely, even for Western Union.

[Deadly_NZ]

But But

if it was a real E-Mail and He's a politician, so just let him rot we got too many of that kinda critter anyways

[Charles Pearmain]

Not just Senators

This scam seems widespread and is hitting more people than just US senators. We've seen two very similar attacks on UK-based users of Yahoo's mail accounts over the past 10 days.

[Stevie]

Heh!

I had one of these, from an acquaintance name of "Rob". Apparently he was marooned in Scotland, mugged and therefore with no cash, with his wife and kid, and tears were streaming down his cheeks as he typed.

I replied, saying that's what he got for going to Scotland, to man up and stop blubbering like a little girl and get a job parking cars instead of begging in the carpark and demanding handouts.

I never heard another word from him so presumably he either took my advice or was eaten by one of the other marooned Americans flooding the carparks of Scotland, England.

[Juan Inamillion]

@Apocalypse Later

Gmail account 'hacked'? Hmm... haven't come across that but I get plenty of dodgy Yahoo emails from friends who dropped their Yahoo accounts ages ago (because it's a shit service and because they seemed to get compromised easily).

I get a bit of spam in my Gmail account (that's filtered out) but otherwise in, oh, 6-7 years I've not had any problem with it whatsoever... (Not saying you won't though).

As "we" all know it's a good idea to have more than one email account and one (or two) should be mobile i.e.Gmail. Not everyone is able to set up their own domain - yes yes it's easy for us, but not necessarily for your average punter and definitely not for your average politician!

Years ago I remember a designer in a studio I did work for asking "why don't we all just have Hotmail accounts?" Oh yes.