In May 2015, we reported an alert to be careful of a Dropbox phishing scam, but it seems not everyone takes such scams seriously.
Kathleen Calligan, the CEO of the BBB has spent a huge chunk of her entire career trying to educate consumers about the importance of internet safety, but she found out on Thursday about her email account being hacked and several emails with a malware attachment were sent as a result of this hacking.
Dropbox users hit with ‘urgent, highly confidential’ docs download phishing scam
According to Calligan, this hacking made her realize how simple and easy it can be to hack something.
“This is a perfect example of how any business or individual can be a victim of scammers who infect your email or hack into email systems,” she said.
Calligan received an email that happens to be sent by one of her friends with some attachment of the Dropbox, few days back. However, soon she realized that it was someone who happens to be a scam expert sending out these emails, not her friend.
“This is a clear example of just how risky it is in today’s internet environment, email environment, to open attachments from known or unknown senders,” Calligan said.
Kathleen Calligan CEO at Better Business Bureau Middle Tennessee
Right after opening that email, Calligan received emails from her friend list who were inquiring about something that was happening.
Calligan immediately took help from the FBI, who in no time revealed that her email was hacked using a Trojan virus, which replicates to send hacking emails to everyone that was in her list.
“This is going to break my heart to say this, but if you receive an email from me with an attachment, delete it,” Calligan said.
According to FBI, Calligan was not the only victim who experienced this virus. There is a huge list of victims who claimed about receiving an email with some Dropbox attachment.
About BBB:
The Better Business Bureau (BBB), founded in 1912, is a nonprofit organization focused on advancing marketplace trust, consisting of 112 independently incorporated local BBB organizations in the United States and Canada, coordinated under the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) in Arlington, Virginia.
The BBB collects and provides free business reviews on more than 4 million businesses to over 123 million requests from consumers in 2013, helping make the BBB’s website rank among the top 300 most-visited websites in the United States.
Read our previous post about Dropbox phishing scam, don’t open an unknown email and never click/download the attachment from any unknown email.
