Don’t panic if you received a nasty email in your inbox letting you know your mail server has been hacked and is demanding a ransom to avoid some embarrassing sharing of your web browsing history.
It’s a bogus scam.
I’ll show you what the email looks like, and why it’s harmless (although certainly annoying).
Here’s the email:
And it continues to go on and on with some techno-geek-speak… which you can completely ignore and disregard.
Here’s how to tell it’s bogus. Simply right-click on the email in Outlook and select “view source”. If you’re using a different email program, there will likely be something equivalent.
In the source view, you’ll see that the email actually originated from a different mail server (Deutschland.. or Germany, in the example below) and not a hacked version of your mail server, as they claim be using.
Wondering what to do if you get one of these messages? Just ignore them or delete them. There’s no need to reply and it’s probably not worth any effort to go after the sender.