Forum Discussion

robert1919's avatar
robert1919
New Contributor
7 years ago

Spammer with correct but old password

I had an email from an unknown sender who wanted bitcoin for not releasing information.  Seems he/she had no correct information I cared about and I deleted.  However the spammer did have a correct password for my account but several passwords old.

This makes me wonder how the old password was obtained.  I chatted with Cox rep and asked the question whether there was any past data breach where password information was compromised about 5 to 6 years ago.  I did not receive a reply to that question.

i was wondering if anyone else had a similar close call on some stranger knowing an old password and the timeframe that old password was used.

  • yak's avatar
    yak
    Contributor III
    7 years ago

    There was an article about this in today's paper.  The scammers are buying passwords from the hacks of Yahoo, eBay, Sony Playstation, etc.  There are already 700 reports of this scam on Reddit; it is now the Number 2 Sticky on their Scams page. The passwords are old because they were hacked in 2014 or earlier.  Just ignore the email and delete it.