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Leakhawk Alert Email

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mooly

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 8:12AM

I received an email titled "Leakhawk Alert Email" with the subject "This email has been compromised.

I just deleted it without opening but then googled "Leakhawk" and I'm not sure whether it's remotely genuine or not.

Any advice on this one...

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sharpamat

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 9:00AM

having done just a quick cheak, I am guessing this is spam in an attempt to sell their product. which it seem is a security program.

Leakhawk is not listed on any web based blacklists, and most reviews refer to domain names being comprised, which may be where they obtained your address http://leakhawk.com/index.php

May give some details helpfull to you to give some idea where they got your details from

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mooly

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 9:22AM

Thanks sharpamat. Thats about all I can turn up on this one too. And straightaway it takes you to a payment request lol.

Never-the-les it's perhaps no bad thing (the email) as it's a wake up call on security and some of my passwords aren't that strong, particularly on sites such as this for example.

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josephbell

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 2:22PM

Hi mooly.

Unfortunately your account details have been compromised, for real. The email you got was part of our courtesy alert program. Our business is to alert our customers when their accounts have been leaked, usually as a part of hacked database. When we monitor the web for leaks, we encounter a lot of accounts that are not covered by LeakHawk service. After we manually check that there's a email and a password in the leak, we send notification email with a link to the incident page where the receiver can find more information, link to the page where we found the email and so on.

We do sell a service but these notification emails are just something we do for free, no strings attached.

Best regards, Joseph from LeakHawk Inc.

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sharpamat

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 3:44PM

Clear PCA is one site which may have been comprised.Maybe worth while only logging on when actually posting

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Woolwell

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 3:55PM

sharpamat - what makes you think PCA has been comprised. Have you had an e-mail. I haven't. I'm not worried about PCA.

Has mooly signed up to LeakHawk? I guess that the e-mail looked like this leakhawk e-mail. I think that this is maybe spam from Leakhawk.

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mooly

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 5:04PM

Evening folks,

I don't really know what to think and I'm not qualified to make a judgement one way or the other on this.

I haven't signed up with LeakHawk, in fact I had never heard of it. A Bing search of "LeakHawk email security" brought just one hit, the same as Woolwell's link I think. If it were such a well known service I would have expected 1000's of hits when Binged or Googled.

What I have done is change all my passwords for ones that are far stronger (min of 15 random characters, and some up to 30 although some sites don't allow that many).

As for email addresses, well I use disposable ones anyway on all forums and so on and so it's no real bother to change those too.

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sharpamat

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 6:44PM

The reason I feel PCA many have been comprised is the reply from josephbell who states his involvement with leakhawk ( Hence reported to FE ) who it seems this was his only posting

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josephbell

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 8:03PM

Sharpamat,

At least according our systems, PCA hasn't been compromised. I'm not a frequent poster here but I wanted to clarify what LeakHawk is doing and why people are receiving these alerts. The last thing we want to do is to send spam. That is why we never send more than one alert per email unless the person behind that email registers an account with us and why we implemented manual approval process for each leak.

mooly was absolutely right when he adviced everybody to use more secure passwords and disposable emails. Using disposable email and unique password for each service is the best defense against leaks.

  • Joseph
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FranzPL

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Posted December 27, 2011 at 9:55PM

Let me guess people..you have used and subscribed to Strator?

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mooly

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Posted December 28, 2011 at 8:14AM

Quote,

"Let me guess people..you have used and subscribed to Strator?

I have never heard of it... please explain your reasoning.

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