Intercepted Email?

[crabby3]

I suppose there are malicious programs for everything these days.

Changing providers, addresses, passwords... does nothing.

Just use 1 laptop and no cell phone.

Any suggestions?

ps - I unchecked Notify me of replies before posting this.

[MilesAhead]

If you email is intercepted without regard to password, isp etc. my question is, how do you know this is happening?  And where do you think the interception point is?  I don't quite understand what you are asking.

[crabby3]

If you email is intercepted without regard to password, isp etc. my question is, how do you know this is happening?  And where do you think the interception point is?  I don't quite understand what you are asking.

-MilesAhead (February 27, 2017, 10:51 AM)

I know it's happening because I receive strange and different looking stuff from my bank.  Mostly trying to get me to click a 'check your balance' button.  I clicked one once and was sent to a logon page that was totally different than the real thing.

Some of my usual (yearly) Payment Confirmation Emails don't get delivered.  These don't come from my bank.

I guess what I'm asking is... what else can I do.

[MilesAhead]

Ok, the first part where they try to get you to click a bogus link is generally referred to as phishing.  I would search for an in depth article how to combat phishing.  Most searches will get you a list of 5 or 10 obvious things like "don't click a link to your bank that is in an email" etc..  On a quick search I haven't found a more comprehensive guide but there must be one out there.

On the second part not getting payment confirmations.  That sounds more devious.  If that also does not go away by changing your email server I don't know what to suggest.  The trouble with TCP/IP is the basic design is a broadcast network and nodes are expected to pick out the packets sent to them.  So everybody can read the packet headers.  If someone is targeting you by filtering huge volumes of packets to catch everything going to you or from you on the backbone then I don't know what you can do.  Somebody who makes a living in online security would be a better source of information than I.

Edit:  A common technique that could be used against you in this case is known as a Man In The Middle Attack

Another possibility is that someone has physically tapped into the network someplace between you and the first junction/relay/server whatever and is sniffing the packets and filtering out what he doesn't want you to get.  In such a case if there were multiple ISPs using that physical network switching to another provider does not cut out the packet sniffer since it is someone physically tapping into the hardware.  If you are not under investigation by the FBI or the IRS then you may have to alert some law enforcement that has jurisdiction over internet fraud in your area that you think there is some type of interception scheme operating.  You may find out other people have already reported it once you find out which law enforcement agency to contact. ( However I would suggest you do not communicate with the cops via email.  If there is a man in the middle the emails the police read might be much nastier than what you actually sent.  Better to only communicate in person or over the phone in real time. )   

[Shades]

If you are able, try to save the mail message in question as an *.eml file and use a text editor to take a look at the content of this file.

You do this to take a proper look at a mail message. Mail clients can be tricked into showing a sender that isn't the actual sender. I know that Outlook 2013 and 2016 have a p.ss poor excuse of a 'Show message source' option. Even an up-to-date Thunderbird mail client isn't so able to the actual message source. Hence, save it as a *.eml file and take a look at it with a text editor.

Not only will you learn much more about where the message comes from. This site explains with an example spam message how you should interpret the information shown to you in the message source.

And as MilesAhead already said...never click links in mail messages. Especially not if these messages come from organizations which have access to your bank account. Better log intro the website of such organizations by typing in the URL yourself in a separate browser session, preferably in a virtual machine you created & configured for the sole purpose of logging into your bank.   

By clicking on such links you are either whisked away to a malicious look-a-like website that records your bank info or receive malware that does the same.