On reporting spam-hacking to authorities

[WorkInProgress]

Because this site seems to have people knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the general cyber world, as well as of the specific world that the site is dedicated to, I put this question out there.

After years of doing a good job of keeping my E-mail secure from hackers, early this morning my primary Yahoo account sent out a get-rich-quick link to everyone in my directory. Perhaps by coincidence and perhaps not, it was the same get-rich-quick link that I had received from someone else's Yahoo account a few days earlier.

I consider myself a crime victim here, and because I've got the link to a very specific commercial venture being advertised in this spam, it seems to me there ought to be some way that federal (or international) agents can track them down and make things unpleasant for these clowns. How do you report spam? Is there a government website where I can log in and file a report? Or does anarchy prevail when it comes to this particular kind of crookery?

Incidentally, in case anyone's interested, here is the link: http://www.panews15.net/biz/?read=0895525 It's programmed to make the name of your own city appear as the location of this fictitional Amy Livingston who struck it rich. It seems to be making the rounds of the Yahoo accounts.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bugman]

You might try calling your local police department and asking them for advice. They may have a cyber-crimes unit. Also, get it touch with Yahoo if you've not already done so.

 

[asutickler]

Same thing happened to my main Yahoo mail about a year ago. NO IDEA how they did it, since my password was a massive string of random characters and so were the answers to my challenge questions.

There's really not, to my knowledge, a whole lot that can be done about it on a case-by-case basis. Report it to Yahoo, and they'll lump it in with all of the other reports and use the data to help law enforcement go after the worst offenders. It sucks, but putting a lot more time and effort into it is likely to be a waste. (Unless, of course, you're secretly some kind of 1337-level hacker.)

 

[General Zod]

May I suggest getting a G-mail account? I am getting a lot of spam crap in my normal Yahoo mail box. Gmail does a much better job of keeping stupid emails out.

 

[socktickler86]

Calling the local police or yahoo will probably get you laughed off the phone. The websites are hosted outside of US jurisdiction (that's why you'll never see a spammer sending you to amazon.com or newegg.com) and yahoo and the likes are constantly battling spammers such as these. For every 1 user who closely guards their accounts and passwords and subsequently complains when they've had an account compromised, there's 10,000 who use "1234" as their password and have their accounts hacked and subsequently complain as well. Yahoo doesn't care (or really, can't care considering the volume). Welcome to the internet, unfortunately.

 

[WorkInProgress]

Thanks, all. Thing is, I'm not sure they did it by figuring out my password. I think that, by receiving their spam note, I may have sent them something involuntarily. I got the note, then my inbox sent the note out, then one of the people in my inbox (maybe more) got hacked the same way, all Yahoo accounts.