Bitcoin Forum

This is what I am understanding.

Yesterday evening after the poker game, I was doing my usual work. At some point, I was going to check my sportsbet T-shirt update. I was looking for the email sportsbet sent so that I get the link to fill up the form. I saw three emails. One already read. The two new with the update of they are running out of the t-shirts. So I opened one of the email, checked the link and it was taking too long time to load the page. When it was annoyingly late, I closed the tab but my system seemed unexpectedly slow. It happens sometimes and I usually force close the system and restart. I did the same and then started my usual work. When I wanted to  login in few of my accounts it always asked me for passwords. Nothing flagged me though. I did not had any 2nd thought. When it was late I gone to bed. Today morning when I wanted to login to bitcointalk discovered everything. Before everything else I knew I had to reset my device which I did.

Now I do not have access of the email. All the accounts, exchanges, business, social media, gambling sites everything that had the email are fucked up. I am contacting each of the sites to help me changing the email addresses. I am going through a lot now. In some accounts I have money locked. This will not be a very easy ride for me. Everything fucked!!!

I do not deserve it. Thanks whoever you are.

Please, I can’t stress this enough, please make sure the email address set to your account is private.


You may have seen what happened to BitcoinGirl.Club here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5266437.0

I believe the hacker discovered his email address simply by clicking on his profile & discovering the email there & the rest is history.

If you haven’t already then follow these steps to make your email address hidden -

- Click Profile at the top of your browser
- Under Modify Profile on the left click Account Related Settings
- Make sure the circled box is ticked (example email address is not mine)

https://i.ibb.co/Kr8Mp7W/1-AA2-E5-A0-1-F33-4-C6-C-B732-78-FBB5-D81158.jpg

Safe surfing & fuck hackers!

I believe the hacker discovered his email address simply by clicking on his profile & discovering the email there & the rest is history.

Extra careful upon handling our accounts, treat this as one of your valuable stuff if you value your account. So far, I never change password and I never visit my email address.

I would probably cry like a baby if that happens to me mygoodness.

Please, I can’t stress this enough, please make sure the email address set to your account is private.

Safe surfing & fuck hackers!

I believe the hacker discovered his email address simply by clicking on his profile & discovering the email there & the rest is history.

But what does this have to do with their email getting hacked?

While it's wise not to reveal your email when not needed - revealing your Email address isn't a direct threat to its security.

Email addresses should be hidden for privacy rather than security, Email addresses are not meant to stay private or secretly buried in your back yard, they are a just like your public key in bitcoin, your duty is PROTECT the private key/ password.

Every day a few websites get hacked and hackers obtain all sort of email addresses from their databases, the chances that at least 1 hacker knows your Email address are pretty HIGH, so hiding them doesn't do much if they are not secured enough, honestly, with today's security's feature it's freaking hard to gain access to an Email address which is "mildly" secured if you use

1- A strong password
2- Multi-factor authentication
3- Different emails for different purposes

Also DO NOT

1- Use a similar email password to sing-up to any forum/website.
2- Don't use unkown email provider.

<...>
2- Multi-factor authentication

I just want to add my 2 cents Satoshi to this story. My account was also hacked few years, fortunately I was able recover it soon without any damage done, thanks to @Cyrus.
Hacker was able to reach not only Bitcointalk account, but also my email too. Back then I didn't care about security much. I used average short passwords just because it's more convenient. 2FA? Why, who needs it. I just was sure that it won't happen too me because I'm not dumb and I don't visit phishing websites or click unknown links in email. But then I learned from my mistake. So, better safe than sorry.
Though, even with all precautions, there is no guarantee that someone will not hack you, what story with Twitter shows.

Happy to see you learned from your mistake. Did you suffer from it financially, did they get any money off you? I’ve never been hacked but I’ve been the victim of credit card fraud 3 times now. Luckily my banks fraud department stopped 2 of them but had to wait a while to be reimbursed on one of them.

Fortunately, hacker wasn't able to take my money. He managed to login to one of my exchange account and tried to withdraw money. But there was SMS verification for withdrawals enabled, so it protected me from bigger problems. I still don't know how exactly he managed to hack me, where was my main mistake. But I really learned from it. Now I use strong and different passwords everywhere, have 2FA enabled and taking other precautions.

Regarding 2FA it's always a two edged sword giving a false sense of security: there is no security advantage setting up a 2FA on your mobile while you access your website with the very same mobile. 2FA should be enabled, for critical services, on a different mobile or computer the one you are using to access such service.

Now the question. If I have a very good password in my mail that is difficult to crack, and I have 2FA, if I log in from another IP, I receive SMS notifications, isn't that enough? And also the mail that is tied to the forum is not used anywhere else.

I've personally set a fake email for my account, that way even if they do discover it, it can't be used to reset my password.

If you use this method, just make sure the domain can't be bought, since that way they could just create the email and reset it that way.

I had not been protecting my account ever since and they can hack this account anytime. I have no worries about it for I can still make a new one here. Anyway, I can get merit if I wanted to even just for member in rank. But, I am not that confident though to reach that rank but still it could be attainable. But I am not after for the rank, the best thing to be here in the forum is to learn from others and reading news about bitcoin. There are other users posting on successful story about bitcoin and there so much we can learn about them. Promoting projects is not really a priority but it can be like an incentives of course for letting the project pays you.

I had not been protecting my account ever since and they can hack this account anytime. I have no worries about it for I can still make a new one here. Anyway, I can get merit if I wanted to even just for member in rank. e for letting the project pays you.

After reading the op, I immediately checked whether my email address here is hidden as stated. Good thing it is 'cause it's been a long time since I checked if my email is seen in public or not. It's not the email I use for important things, though, but I prefer for it to stay hidden just to be sure. I have multiple email accounts; one email for work; another for things involving money; and another for other purposes.

Gosh. Hackers are really everywhere. Let's always stay safe, everyone.