Some unknown cyber criminals have been hijacking people’s e-mail accounts and demanding ransom for their return, according to security firm Websense.
Goodness. This is terrible. You mean someone might hijack my boss’s ability to call me a schmuck via electronic messaging? Or that they may ransom my naive high-school friend’s means of forwarding every “little-Mary-has-brain-cancer” chain e-mail she runs across?
Come to think of it, the potential ramifications of this new crime are endless.
For example, by hijacking my e-mail address, the cyber-thieves would be removing people’s ability to thank me by writing “tx” as if they’re elves who are four keystrokes away from being adults. They’d also be stealing people’s ability to write “lol” next to things that aren’t funny.
If someone hijacked my e-mail address, people would also no longer be able to communicate with me in all lower-case letters, making me wonder if they think they’re being cute, cool, or if they’re just too lazy to hit the “shift” key.
Heck, with my e-mail account hijacked, passive-aggressive colleagues would no longer be able to cc the boss on e-mails with “suggestions” in them, hoping that copying the boss would get me to act out of fear.
I would also no longer be able to receive those all-hands “ra ra” e-mails from the boss in charge of my boss and the inevitable reply-all “you’re-absolutely-right-boss” e-mails from the office ass-kissers.
And those “you-are-such-a-moron” e-mails from readers … boy, will I miss those.
Of course, these are all things that happened at previous jobs, not here.
Is there anyone out there who can hook me up with some e-mail-account hijackers? Have I got an address for them.
