Hacked account

Question

Hacked account

Anonymous

Hi,

I got a threatening mail from my own mail account but of course I did not send it to myself. It was black mailing me to send them money.

How do I secure my email account and make sure it is not hacked?

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Answer 1

Hello

Looks like you received the famous Pegasus phishing scam. If you Google about it, you will find tons of information about this. Bottom line - your account is safe, your computer is safe. They are using scare tactic and ID spoofing to make you believe that your account is compromised, so that they can blackmail you into doing what they asked you to do.

Did you see this email in junk folder, and it is labeled as "unverified"?

Email spoofing happens when someone uses an outside mail server to send messages that pretend to come from your email address by forging the "From" field. They do not have access to your actual email account. To prevent and detect this, email providers like Microsoft use protections like SPF (to define which servers are allowed to send on your behalf), DKIM (to attach a digital signature to prove the email is real), and DMARC (to tell other servers what to do if a message fails these checks). If a spoofed email fails these checks, it will usually be flagged as spam or rejected.

So, if the email is already in spam/junk folder, you have nothing to worry about.