Advice Request Backdated and disappearing emails - please help

[Jaspion]

I am currently working on commision for a Chinese company. Long story short, I have received two backdated emails from them. They simply popped up in my inbox (hotmail) dated the day before, when the day before I checked my email and there was nothing. And today I saw right before my eyes an email disappear from my inbox (it was open and was replaced with an error message, no way I accidentaly deleted it).

I call upon the mighty knowledge pool of MT to help me decipher these shenanignans. I didn't think email was supposed to be able to do that.

 

[The_King]

I would change your email password immediately and enable 2FA if you have not. Your password is most likely compromised.

Also go to secuirty settings and log out of all devices.

 

[Jaspion]

I would change your email password immediately and enable 2FA if you have not. Your password is most likely compromised.

Also go to secuirty settings and log out of all devices.

Security settings look good.

 

[Jaspion]

Plus, someone with access to my account might explain the disappearing email, but not the backdated ones.

 

[The_King]

Plus, someone with access to my account might explain the disappearing email, but not the backdated ones.

Interesting,

Only thing I can think of is that the person who accessed your email account was in another timezone from you. (just a shot in the dark)

I hope you did change your password. It easy for someone to cover their tracks and log out of sessions.
Look at logged in IP addresses history. Im not sure those can be deleted on hotmail.

You could also contact Hotmail/MS and ask them to check things on their side.

 

[Freki123]

I would be more worried about email vanishing. I had emails from legit companies show up dated e.g. 2 hour back while I just checked for emails 5 mins ago. I had that on home/work pc which I consider clean. It happens very rarely but it happened (at least for me).
Like 1 every 600 mails or so.

 

[Jaspion]

I would be more worried about email vanishing. I had emails from legit companies show up dated e.g. 2 hour back while I just checked for emails 5 mins ago. I had that on home/work pc which I consider clean. It happens very rarely but it happened (at least for me).
Like 1 every 600 mails or so.

The vanished email was actually still in my the Deleted Items folder, so I can't entirely rule out an accidental deletion. But I'd say it's unlikely. I was reading another email on my PC when this one disappeared from the list of emails in my inbox. I knew this email was open on my cell phone, so I unlocked it to check, and saw instead an "error loading message" message.

Maybe the backdating is a Chinese firewall thing, messages get the time stamp when they're sent, but they're sent to officials who check them manually and that takes time? IDK

 

[The_King]

The vanished email was actually still in my the Deleted Items folder, so I can't entirely rule out an accidental deletion. But I'd say it's unlikely. I was reading another email on my PC when this one disappeared from the list of emails in my inbox. I knew this email was open on my cell phone, so I unlocked it to check, and saw instead an "error loading message" message.

Maybe the backdating is a Chinese firewall thing, messages get the time stamp when they're sent, but they're sent to officials who check them manually and that takes time? IDK

If your PC or Andriod device is infected with a RAT then all security settings will check out because the attacker is using your device and IP address to access your email.

 

[CyberTech]

As The_King said, use Antivrius and Malwarebyte to scan the device if you use PC..

 

[shmu26]

1 The disappearing email that appeared in deleteds, this sounds to me more like a glitch with hotmail rather than a security issue.

I knew this email was open on my cell phone,

Maybe hotmail isn't smart enough to handle this situation, and an error took place.

2 The slow delivery of email messages is probably a different issue, it is probably caused by overload on the chinese servers.

 

[Jaspion]

If your PC or Andriod device is infected with a RAT then all security settings will check out because the attacker is using your device and IP address to access your email.

As The_King said, use Antivrius and Malwarebyte to scan the device if you use PC..

MB, EEK, Panda, Comodo, all report a clean PC. Mobile has Bitdefender. Don't think it's the case.

1 The disappearing email that appeared in deleteds, this sounds to me more like a glitch with hotmail rather than a security issue.

Maybe hotmail isn't smart enough to handle this situation, and an error took place.

2 The slow delivery of email messages is probably a different issue, it is probably caused by overload on the chinese servers.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I imagine they must have some sort of semi-automated filtering system that might delay or get things wrong. IDK. I already had to stop using another (gmail) address with them because it somehow got blacklisted for spam.