ALEX BRUMMER: My email hygiene efforts went horribly wrong

My email hygiene efforts have gone terribly wrong. In an effort to separate my personal, financial, health, volunteer and charity activities from my work at the Ny Breaking, I use a personal email account.

Considering that company equipment – ​​cell phone, computer and iPad – is used to access the private account, I had assumed that two-factor authentication and firewalls would largely protect me from scammers.

How foolish can you be.

I am also very aware that using company email for personal matters can be seen as a conflict.

The appearance of a Ny Breaking email address may be misinterpreted by some commercial providers as a desire for special treatment.

Yesterday, shortly after 10am, my cell phone started ringing incessantly, my WhatsApp account pinged and the message box on my cell phone lit up. Friends, charity contacts and colleagues with my 'private' email details received a harmless message purporting to be from me.

Under the subject line 'Happy New Year' the following words appeared: 'Hello, I hope you are doing well. Sorry to bother you, do you shop online at Amazon?”

The senior colleague sitting across from me saw a rat and verbally asked if this email was really from me.

The same message had gone to my entire personal email list, with a lot of overlap to my work address.

Most people who contacted me wanted to verify that the original message came from me. But some of my contacts just hit the answer key.

What emerged was the scam message: “I want you to get an Amazon e-gift card for a friend's daughter who has liver cancer. Today is her birthday and I promised to deliver the card to her today, but I can't do this now because all my efforts to buy online failed.

“Can you get it from Amazon? I will refund you as soon as possible. Please let me know if you can handle it.”

The use of the cancer story may have given it an air of authenticity, as I personally came into contact with the disease last year and the recipients may have believed that as a sufferer I would be particularly sympathetic to the 'friend's daughter'. .

To my horror, despite some strange syntax, the capital 'L' for liver and the repetition of 'money back', at least two acquaintances immediately took action.

One extremely well-meaning friend sent £5,000 (later recovered), another promised £50 and promised a further £100 from his partner.

They have been scammed and it makes me feel sick because of my limited control over events. Because I worked for a large company, where we have IT experts available, my direct point of contact was the technical helpdesk.

It immediately took action, sending an equal number of messages and emails to contacts warning of the hack.

But new fake messages were still going out. With the help of IT, a new two-factor authentication was set up on my office account and my personal account was closed for 24 hours so that the operators could perform security checks.

It turns out that Amazon e-gifts are a bit like digital currencies. They are the big favorite of crooks. Email addresses are purchased on the dark web and Amazon e-gifts appear essentially untraceable.

Cash for old rope, a gift to money launderers and criminals, many of whom, I was told by IT security, can be traced back to Lagos.

If Amazon e-gifts are so gentle with villains, real questions can be asked as to why a company so large, powerful and influential, with access to the latest tech security and AI, doesn't have this massive loophole poem .

There is enormous frustration among major financial institutions that the responsibility for combating online fraud and the costs of compensation rests on their shoulders.

The banks have tightened requirements for facial and fingerprint recognition and issued warnings against scammers.

However, the bandits could potentially be left out if the paths to our personal data were more closely guarded by the major broadband network providers and if Big Tech put the risks to users above freedom of speech and profit.

The unbridled power of Big Tech could pose a threat.