MEMBERS of the public have been urged to take extra care online after a recent email hacking scam.

The warning came from North Wales Police's Cyber Crime Team this week.

A spokesman said: "A member of the public’s e-mail account was recently hacked. 

"The hacker then sent all their contacts the below message asking them to purchase hundreds of pounds worth of gift cards on their behalf and further requesting that they send them the redemption codes. 

"You will notice that the message uses social engineering by mentioning that the gift cards are for a friend who is seriously ill.

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"If anyone asks you to purchase gift cards on their behalf or to send them gift cards for any reason, consider that it could be a scam. Speak to the person face to face or over the phone to ensure that the request is genuine before sending anything.

The Leader: The scam message sent to the person's contactsThe scam message sent to the person's contacts (Image: NWP)

 

If you suspect that any of your online accounts have been hacked, you should:

  • Change your password immediately to secure your account
  • Ensure that your password is as long as possible as the secret to a strong password is having a long password. A simple way of ensuring this is by joining three random words together to create a password that will be very difficult to hack. Adding symbols and numbers to the three random word password will make it even stronger.

The police spokesman added: "We also encourage everyone to turn on 2-Step Verification (2SV) on accounts as this adds an additional layer of security to your accounts. 

"With 2-Step Verification turned on, even if a Cyber Criminal has your password, they still won’t be able to access your accounts as they won’t have the additional code that’s needed to access the account."