My husband's been hacked

Someone hacked into my husband's e-mail account and was sending out threatning and hate e-mails. I received one of the hate e-mails. It looked legitimate from his e-mail account. I knew he didn't send it because he was at work and didn't have access to a computer. The only computer he has access to is mine and he hasn't used it for several months. This e-mail was so hateful toward our business competition. It threatened to do vandelism on this other business and to possibly "kill" one of the employees of this business. I knew immediately my husband hadn't sent it. I called him to confirm it. Later I received an e-mail from someone else giving me their condolences. This friend had received an e-mail that said we were selling our business and quitting. Someone had figured out my husband's password to his e-mail. When we opened up his e-mail, we could see that someone has been going in for weeks. (We looked in the trash file, the trash is emptied every day and the dates in the trash file confirmed that someone had been hacking into his e-mail for weeks). We immediately changed my husbands e-mail password. We were lucky that the person who hacked into his account didn't change the password. My husband would still be receiving e-mails but this phantom would be the one receiving it. It's kind of scary that someone would spend that much time in front of the computer to figure out what his password was. We turned everything in to the prosecuting attorney. We know they can't do anything about it but the law knows that if vandalism does occur, we are innocent of the damage. It can't be blamed on us. The worst part is, we are 99% sure of who hacked into the e-mail account. This was a man who has been my DH's best friend since high school. He also lives next door. He's alligned himself with our business competition and he knows my DH well enough to guess at what he would use for a password. The wording used in the e-mails and the way they were done is definately his immaturity and mentality. The only question is we don't know how many people have received these hate/threatening e-mails. Just had to vent. - Melody

I would try and draft an email to be sent to ANYBODY that you know would know you and your dh and/or about ur business. I would even go as far as having it come from an attorney. IF there is anyway to press slander charges....that could be mentioned in the email. SEND IT TO THIS idiotic person who you think is the culprit. Jerk!! Sorry that you've had to go threw this. Gala

I don't know how to do it, but i am pretty sure that EVERY email that is sent has an electronic file, a signature of sorts that includes the IP address that corresponds to the computer or internet account that the email was sent from. It wouldn't make any difference if you found out it was sent from a publicly accessed computer, but if it was from someone's home computer, well, that is another story. Any folks out there with a little more technical knowledge that could help out here? That totally bites that there are people out there with that much spare time on their hands to contrive such malicious things.

Gosh Melody, I'm so sorry to hear about this. If your e-mail account has a sent items folder you can check to see who all got e-mails sent to them and you could use that as a starting place to send out apologetic letters. Also, especially if you are using outlook, sometimes when you type in an address it is kind of "saved" in the address bar where you type the addresses in. Maybe you can try typing in different addresses and see whish ones pop up. I'm glad you have been able to figure it out before it got too out of hand and have taken it to the police. You two have been through so much in your life, you didn't need something like this on top of it all. I haven't posted here in a long time, but I think of you often. I hope everything with your business and with your family trials are working themselves out. This sounds kind of creepy but, you must be doing something right or the adversary wouldn't be trying so hard to bring you down! Keep faith with the Lord and everything will work out in the end. My prayers are with you!! Brenda

Thank you Brenda. I needed to hear your words of wisdom right now. I'm not a "poor me or pity me" type person. I am however, a person that just accepts what is happening and goes with the flow. I've been so pre-occupied with "going with the flow" that I've forgotten the source of many of our problems. Thank you for reminding me that I'm a threat to the adversary. Makes me feel a lot stronger and fight a little harder. Melody