Bogus "account hacked" message

At 08:56 PM 8/01/2019 -0600, you wrote: I've been receiving the same 'hacked your account, sending this from your account, send bitcoins' scam emails for a while. They are NOT from 'my account' (what does that even mean?) although the sender email address is same as one or more of mine. But that is spoofable. I ignore them. I can see all the headers, which include lines like: X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3022 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3022 Since I'd rather die than use MS Outlook Express, or even install it an any system of mine, I know they lie (and for other reasons.) Recently one quoted 'my password' as evidence. It's a password I used on a porn site long ago, and that site changed hands and became a junk site sometime since. Maybe the new owners branched into extortion scams? I also at times receive a lot of scamming phone calls to my landline. Sometimes several a day. These have such a consistent format that I'm sure they must come from some group, even though they use different names. The phone rings, I pick up, there's a variable duration interval of silence, then a pooiip! popping sound (their system connecting this call to one of their operators, now that I answered), then a usually very Indian sounding voice (M or F) says something like "Hello, this is Microsoft security service" or "Hello this is product testing group." I never bother to go along with it to see what their intent is. Just hang up usually. We all know the government has total surveilance of all electronic communications. Don't argue, this is not a 'conspiracy theory'. I've even had dinner with a guy who was my interpreter wife's boss at the time, as head of the Sydney branch of Australia's national crime commission's intercepts division. Discussed the Echelon system (as it was named then) system with him, which he acknowledged existed. I asked so, what percentage of ALL communications (voice and digital) does the system capture and analyze for keywords? (Echelon used a 'dictionary' of keywords and phrases of interest, put together each week by the NATO powers, and shared among them all. Intercepts in each country are done on coms backbones, with each site existing as a diplomatic enclave, manned by intelligence staff who are acting on behalf of 'foreign allies' hence getting around local surveilance legal limitations. Any intelligence of interest is passed to local intelligence services as a diplomatic communication, so the local gov was not 'spying on their own citizens.' Ha ha ha. It sucks, but that is how it worked nearly 20 years ago. Certainly much worse now. I don't know what the equivalent system is called these days.) His answer: around 98%. Now here's the thing. Another interesting observation one could make: You'd think these kind of scamming emails and phone calls should be illegal, and easily prosecutable. You'd think it would require almost no effort at all from law enforcement and coms carriers, to identify the sources. Given that they have total transparency of the telecoms infrastructure. Not to mention that if Indian call centers are involved there would be international carrier contracts and national entry points that would stand out like searchlights in traffic analysis. Same goes for Asian paid web click farms, etc. Even botnets with encrypted command channels - I can't believe it can be technically impossible to shut these down. So, how does this bullsh*t continue? One can only conclude that the large scale scamming operations are conducted with the knowledge of, and probably complicity of, government at some level. The real question is why. I can make guesses about that too. But doubt many here would find it comfortable. Or on topic. Guy