[GCARC] FYI hacker attempts on my Hotmail

[Agustin Neron Properties LLC]

Hi all,
          I'm mentioning this because of some recent events (none succeeded ) that were alarming to find out. Had an email at my main Comcast account today appearing to originate from my Hotmail account. Deleted as was an obvious scam attempt. Decided to go change my password at Hotmail just in case. Successfully changed it, then discovered you can display a trail of login attempts to your account, it has the originating IP address, and apparent country of origin. In the past 24hrs alone .... over 50 login attempts from roughly 25 countries! Several hundred over the past week alone. Fortunately, all showed failure.
 
Now I should mention that I use the Hotmail account on qrz.com, where we know there are many scam attempts. Also, many of the major data breaches included both of my email addresses at one time or another. I have several credit cards which monitor dark web activity, and lately I've been getting alerts every day. Not only has both of my emails shown up on the dark web, but thanks to the National Public Data breach in the summer, my SS# is now being trafficked on the Dark Web (most likely yours are too, every SS# in the US was gathered in that breach).
 
Course of action:
*I'm now changing all passwords frequently, especially on banking and credit card accounts.
*I put a freeze (this is FREE) on my credit report at all 3 bureaus. A hard inquiry cannot be made by a scammer with a freeze.
*Add double authentication for every account that offers it.
 
If any IT security gurus in the club have any additional advice, please post or email me.
 
73
Darrell AB2E