How to stop “Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System” e-mail spam

What is “Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System” e-mail spam

“Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System” is a popular spam message designed to bait inexperienced users into thinking their computer has been hacked and therefore used for extracting explicit/private content from it. In fact, all the claims made by this or similar spam messages are fake and have nothing to do with what they say. The message usually claims that cybercriminals gained access to various recording devices (e.g., camera, microphone, screen) and have used them for recording sensitive content without users’ permission over the course of several months. It is said that threat actors managed to infiltrate a spyware virus which allowed them to get explicit recordings of e-mail recipients watching adult content on pornography websites. To keep the non-existent recordings unpublicized, scammers give 50 hours to pay 850 USD or 1750 EUR in Bitcoin cryptocurrency – or otherwise, the content will be leaked and shared with users’ contacts. As we already mentioned, the “Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System” and other similar spam campaigns are designed to spread fake information and make users believe in non-existent threats. Thus, paying scammers is pointless and will simply end up being a waste of your money. Even if sometimes such messages partially coincide with what a person was doing, there is still nothing to worry about due to the aforementioned. Spam messages are countless and can be titled in different ways, such as “Your personal data has leaked due to suspected harmful activities.”, “Ihre persönlichen Daten sind wegen des Verdachts auf schädliche Aktivitäten nach außen gelangt.” and so forth. Beware of such messages and read our guide with useful tips on how to avoid such e-mail scam techniques and lower the chance of their delivery.

Spam e-mail (English version)

Spam e-mail (German version)

Dangers that e-mail scams like “Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System” may create

Apart from simply containing fake information and extracting money from users, e-mail spam campaigns may also distribute malicious attachments or links designed to infiltrate malware. Such spam messages often impersonate legitimate names of popular companies (e.g, Amazon, Netflix, DropBox, DPD, FedEx, McAfee, OpenSea, etc.) and trick users into downloading malicious attachments (e.g. Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, Archives, Executables, JavaScript, etc.) or opening links in order to “Renew the Expired Subscription”, “Track your parcel”, “Remove detected threats”, and perform other fake actions. Meeting demands of such messages will most likely lead to pages that require log-in credentials and steal them upon their input or download devastating malware (like ransomware). Thus, it is important to avoid interacting with suspicious and potentially dangerous letters that are delivered to your e-mail. Do not turst what they say and better delete them completely. We also encourage you to follow our full-fledged guide below for more practical tips on how to avoid and protect yourself against such scam threats in the future.

1. Download Anti-Spam and Anti-Malware Tools
2. Mark unwanted e-mail messages as Spam
3. Delete Spam letters
4. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns
5. Change your e-mail address and forward it
6. Final tips

1. Mark e-mail as Spam

If an e-mail message has not been put to the “spam” or “junk” folder itself, then users can do it themselves in just a couple of steps. Marking e-mail as spam will let your e-mail service know how to treat the unwanted sender next time. All further messages received from the spam-marked address will be located in the appropriate folder already without your help. Here is how:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the stop sign icon (the one with an exclamation mark) on top.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the Spam icon on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on Junk and Block afterward.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Click on it and choose the Junk Mail (trash can with “X”) icon.

2. Delete Spam letters

You can also clear your “spam” or “junk” folder from all the collected such letters. It is always good to maintain your e-mail clean and without trash that clutters even your spam folders. This is how you can wipe it:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and go to Spam on sidebar.
2. If you want to wipe all the spam letters at once, click Delete All Spam Messages Now.
3. If you want to do it selectively, click on the message you need and choose Delete forever.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click Delete on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook and navigate to Junk Email on the sidebar.
2. Then, click on Empty folder to clear all spam messages.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click the Trash can icon on top.

3. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns

Many websites offer users to enter their e-mail address in exchange for exclusive content notifications, and tons of other marketing stuff. Over some time, regular users can subscribe to multiple resources that bombard your inbox and spam folder with continuous messages. This can be stopped by unsubscribing to them. Many messages, if opened, have a small gray hyperlink or button “Unsubscribe”. Clicking on it should unsubscribe you from letters you have been receiving for some time. Note that some intentionally malicious letters may use fake “Unsubscribe” buttons to deceive users into downloading malware or visiting suspicious pages. Therefore, remember to always stay on alert!

You can also do the following to unsubscribe to multiple newsletters in Gmail at once:

1. Open your Gmail and type Unsubscribe into the search box on top.
2. Then, click on the Show search options icon on the right end of the search box.
3. Click on Create filter and select checkboxes next to Delete it and Apply filter to matching conversations.
4. After selecting, finish by clicking on Create filter.

This will lead to all previously subscribed messages evaporating from your flood list in seconds. No more letters of such will appear in your Inbox or other folders again.

4. Change your e-mail address and forward it

It is sometimes hard to get rid of all spam in case of an e-mail breach. Receiving unreasonably high numbers of spam could mean your e-mail was leaked to large masses of spamming campaigns grateful to use it. Victims of this can quite easily avoid it by creating a new e-mail address and forwarding incoming e-mails from their old address. Don’t worry, this will not redirect abnormal streams of spam to this new address, but only normal messages you received on your behalf. It is also worth notifying people you had close contact with that you changed your e-mail address, so they do not get scared after receiving a message from an unknown address.

1. First, you should begin with creating a new account for the e-mail service you use (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or Apple Mail).
2. Then, log back into your old account, go to Settings and Add a forwarding address. In Gmail, these settings can be found in the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab. Something similar should be in other services as well.
3. Enter the newly created e-mail address and click Next > Proceed > OK.
4. You will then receive a verification message in that newly created address. Make sure you click on it.

If you also want to forward a copy of already existing e-mails, do the following:

1. Go back to the settings page for the Gmail account you want to forward messages from, and refresh your browser.
2. Navigate to Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Forward a copy of incoming mail to.
3. Choose what you want to happen with the Gmail copy of your emails. It is recommended to choose Keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox. Click Save changes at the end.

All done and dusted! Now, all new messages tied to the previous e-mail will be sent to your new address.

Final tips

There is always a good practice to have personal and business e-mail accounts separately. If you are active on forums, Q&A sites, participate in link building you will probably need another account for that. Major e-mail services and applications like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Apple Mail and Outlook already have strong built-in anti-spam technologies, however, we recommend special software like MailWasher Pro to fight spam campaigns like “Professional Hacker Managed To Hack Your Operating System”.