Our financial information may be compromised! What do we do now?!

[hugsandpugs]

We are using a financial advisor to help us buy purchase our first property. Over the last few months have obviously sent him proof of funds, bank statements etc for the mortgage company!

Heard off him today saying he thinks his email has been hacked as myself and other clients have received an email from him asking us to open a ‘document’.

Hes told me to change my email address password but what else do we need to do? Are we at risk of our bank accounts being hacked? Our identity being used in other ways etc?

panicking right now! 😥

Did you get this email with said 'document' and did you open it?

You need to find out if these hackers took over his email as they could see all the documents you sent presumably? Has he contacted the police?

So the email came from financial advisors email and said ‘name sent you a document’ clicked to open it and it asked to sign in to outlook,gmail etc to open it which I did. I put in my password for my email. But it didn’t actually open anything just went to an adobe verification screen 😥😬😭

Change all your passwords as a starter. Be very vigilant of your bank accounts.

What you will really have to be wary of is emails, messages and phone calls from your bank or utilities companies etc. I'd expect a phone call from your bank's 'Security Team' to say your account has been compromised and to go through a bunch of security steps - however it will be scammers and not the bank (they usually try to get you to transfer money from your current account to a 'new' 'safe' account which turns out to be theirs). They can even spoof their phone number so that it shows up as the actual security number of your bank.

If the above ever happens, hang up and phone your bank from a different phone - they can keep connected even after you hang up, so when you use the same phone to call your bank you actually just end up back on the phone to the scammer.

Also be aware of emails from your mobile phone / TV / energy providers saying that your direct debit has failed and to click a link to login and setup a new one - that'll be scammers again, who may well use the info you put in to pull the 'Security Team' scam above.

Also be wary of messages from other services saying you're due a refund and to contact them. The refund scam is very prominent in India (a quick look on Youtube will return endless videos explaining this one).

So, the advisors email was hacked, and a document was sent from that email address. When opened, you entered you email password? If it was gmail, then the hackers now have full access to your Google data - emails, Drive documents, etc. Change the password right now, log into your goggle account and sign out any connected devices/accounts. If it was Outlook, then same - change password right away and sign out any connected devices/accounts.

If you have any documents on Google Drive or MS OneDrive, and there are passwords contained in that document, change those too.

In effect, your email has now also been hacked. Put a post on SM letting people know to ignore any emails from you and do not open any attachments

You will need to change all passwords urgently, having entered your Outlook details you have now unfortunately given access to everything. Change your bank passwords, app passwords, etc. and if you can I would pay for an independent IT person to do a sweep of your machine. I don't mean to alarm you but it is very serious and unfortunately having been through similar with work recently I am aware it has to be taken very seriously.

Yes I entered my outlook password. It’s the email address I use for anything to do with the house buying so solicitors, financial advisors, surveyors etc.

I asked the financial advisor whether our financial details are compromised and he said no not from his end because they are stored away?

My concern is though whether they’ve now got access to my email. Even though I’ve changed the password for that now is there anything else I can do? Do I need to contact my banks or anything? I feel so stupid 😭😭 im usually so overcautious with these types of things just naively assumed he had sent me a document from the mortgage company or solicitors etc!

Ok yeah, I guess you have been compromised then. Better change pw for absolutely everything. And check your bank accounts!

You need to change all your passwords to everything.

Literally everything on my phone? Would my photos etc be compromised?

How can they get access to everything else with just one email password?

Sounds like they will have access to your email.

Do you use the same password across different accounts? If so change them all. To unique ones for each account

Because password reset emails will go to the compromised account

I don’t no, this was just an email I set up a while ago mainly for emails to do with house purchase so they didn’t get lost in my main email

I haven’t got anything set up to go to that account in terms of password resets I don’t think. It’s not my main email account that I use it was just one I set up for like online food shops and house purchase emails