Terry Inglese

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is Friday evening here in Switzerland.

Here we are! With a lot of joy I announce that my nightmare is over, finally!!!

I just thought to share with you about a couple of things that I learnt from this awful situation … but as we say in Italian “non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere” (not all the bad things that happen in life will harm you), I want to use this opportunity to share some suggestions:

• First of all, I want to thank all the people that thought about me, that called me from the USA, from Italy, from Switzerland, the ones that wrote me and that thought about me, … and that in a way wanted to help and were skeptical about the entire situation! Thank you all from my heart! I do really-really appreciate it a lot! This is a sign that people always want to help others … and mainly that in dramatic situations there is always someone open to help and give support! So, let’s do not loose hope about human beings!
• In addition, I learnt that in such situations there is a first ‘panic’ approach, especially for those people that are not no ‘internet literate’. So, I suggest to stay quite and have a lot of patience, because the recovery process is a long one …
• Another thing that I learnt is that this fraud-phenomenon is called phishing. Please, read about it here: http://www.melani.admin.ch/themen/00103/index.html?lang=en
• what happened? the “internet criminals” – let’s call them like this – entered through my facebook profile – please, watch about a strange question on recognizing people through pictures!!! Do not answer! NEVER!!! That is how they got my facebook password!
• what was my mistake: Unfortunately, I was using the same password for the facebook and for my Gmail Google accounts !!! … I know! I know! This was my mistake… being so busy with a lot of things, we humans use some memory shortcuts! But this is what I learnt: always use different passwords and change them often!
• What I also suggest that you copy or keep tracking of the emails of people in a separate word/excel document, so that – under pressure and panic – you are able to communicate with your people.
• I also learnt that these criminals cannot write English very well. In addition, they do not speak and write using foreign languages: for communicating with my Italian friends, they used some strange automatic translations systems, creating a strange ‘pastiche’  language. And with my German speaking friends, they do not even answered to the questions my friends asked them!
• The feeling of being robbed of my identity is really a very-very strange one. I asked some friends that communicated with the criminals to send me their email interactions, and strangely enough they looked for information also in my personal emails in order to answer to questions that my people asked them to check for consistency.
• If you might experience such an event yourself (and I do not hope so!), do ask always personal questions in order to really notice if the criminals you are writing with are your friends or not! 
• I reported a criminal charge towards these ‘internet criminals’ at our Swiss Police. I have also to add that there is a great lack of competencies in these cases; the policemen helped me how they could, but I think that they are not prepared in such cases and there is a need of additional education and training on such events. But – in any case – it is very very important to report these criminal charges in order to bring some changes for the next future!
• I communicated what happened to a series of London’s newspaper and to The Criminal Investigation of London.
• I communicated also with someone working for the bank Western Union in Switzerland (Western Union is the bank that these criminals are using for their criminal acts) , and this person told me that there is a general chaos regarding Western Union banks – especially in England. So my question is: are the London police doing something against such crime?
• I do firmly believe that facebook is not a secure area and that it is really important to be aware!
• For those of you who want to know more about the psychology of virus writers and hackers, I found a great English researcher Dr. Sarah Gordon, who is reserching and writing about these phenomena, but from a psychological and more broad perspective: www.badguys.org/index.htm
• What I would really be interested in is in knowing: how do these criminals will spend the money they get in such a ‘dirty’ way from people?
• Finally, I just would like to thank the Google technicians and informatics for their great job in detecting these frauds! Thank you guys! … it is a pity that you do not even have a form so that people can send you a thank you note!

These, my dear friends and colleagues, are just some reflections from my  strange experience, and you were also part of it. I am really sorry about that!

I will continue to use my gmail email!

Thanks again, and Happy Summer 2010! 

Terry

Dear friends and collegues,

today is the 3rd of August 2010, and it is 5 am in the morning here in Switzerland. I just want to share with you an event that happened yesterday: my facebook profile has been stolen, so also my entire gmail account database. Maybe some of you already received a very strange email from my past email – inglese.terry(at)gmail.com – requesting from ‘me’ money and other stuff.

Please do NOT respond at all to these kinds of emails.

I am right now using my website as an additional possibility to ‘save my face and my reputation’.

Anway, the story is the following: on facebook I was requested a couple of days ago to recognize 5 or 6 pictures of people that I know, and then I received yesterday two emails from facebook saying that my password is not valid anymore and that it was changed. This means that I cannot access to my facebook profile BUT that my profile is still active! It has been stolen and it is now used to ask money from ‘me’ to you. Please, trash it immediately!

If you get an email such this below, please be aware:

“ > Da: Terry Inglese [mailto:inglese.terry(at)gmail.com]
> Inviato: lunedì, 2. agosto 2010 13:22
> A: undisclosed recipients:
> Oggetto: PLEASE HELP !!
 I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here to
 London,United Kingdom for a short vacation, unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed ,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.We’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all,ill,Please reply me back and let me know if you can havethe money wire to me through western union i promise to pay back as soon as i get back home”

This guy is asking that you send the money to a  Western Union Bank located in London at 20 Leicester Square and that you send him via email also the confirmation number … maybe using still my gmail address!

I am adding a link that I found on the Western Union Bank website were other people experieced the same situation that I am experiencing right now!

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=64b804ccd4b5fa44&hl=en

So, the criminal modality is the same!

I am also hoping for a soon collaboration of Google in getting my gmail email account back!

I am feeling a strange ‘something’ of having ‘lost’ part of my ‘digital’ identity… like someone is coming in your home to steal!

I deeply apologize for this act of internet criminality, and I hope that this nightmare will end soon!

Many thanks for your comprehention and your patience, I do really appreciate it a lot!

Terry