Saturday, June 12, 2010

I Was Hacked!

While I was away in Yorkshire on Thursday some nasty person started interfering in my life.

At about 4 pm I got a call on my mobile (cell) phone from a friend in Belgium stating she had recieved a disturbing e-mail from me. In fact, both her e-mail addresses and her husband's e-mail address had all recieved this e-mail. The text of the e-mail stated that I had been robbed at gunpoint in London, all our passports had been taken . . . etc. I believe that the e-mail asked for money. HA! Not only am I poor, none of my friends have money either.

My friend knew that the e-mail wasn't from me as there was terrible punctuation and bad grammar.

Well the end result was that by the time I got home on Thursday night, my husband and I had fielded a number of calls from many countries from frightened friends who were worried about me. A pal in London was going to come and collect me. It would have been nice to see that friend, but there was no need. The same goes for the friend who lives here in Scotland who offered to put an extra helmet on the back of a very cool motorcycle and venture down south.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their kind concern. I'm fine and you were all darlings to be worried!

Logging on to my profile on the computer, I discovered that I could not access my e-mail acount, I could not access my Facebook account and my dear blog had been taken off line!

I've managed to claw my Google account and my Blogger account back to my own control. I must say getting the language on the e-mail account switched from Korean back to English was a challenge! Did this happen in Korea? When I went into settings, I had to switch the country from Nigeria back to the UK. Did this happen in Nigeria? Though the account was returned to me, I discovered in the settings that all incoming e-mail were still being forwarded. I disabled that! I'll be sending the forwarding e-mail address along to the police.

My Facebook account is still off-line. I am hopeful that I will have it back today sometime.

It was a particularly MEAN scam. Anybody I ever sent an e-mail to during my job search and all my family and friends were told I had been robbed.

Getting the account re-set, I have lost all my old e-mails. The carefully undeleted ones. Recently a photo of my great grandmother had been sent to me and I failed to save the photo somewhere else. I had never seen her face before and now I'll have to have it re-sent.

All the passwords have been changed. This is SUCH a pain in the neck but as I know now, quite necessary. The new ones are quite strong and will be changed from time to time.

I hate having to change passwords and when I am not forced to do it, will let the password stay the same. . . . until now. Why oh why do I always have to learn the hard way?

14 comments:

mrs K said...

Peggy

I knew it had to be something odd going on as the email I received was 'blocked' and I got the usual alert not to open it, so I did not.

I am sorry this happened to you, but it seems that whatever protection we have someone absolutely determined to be nasty will be.

Glad you are all OK and back up and running. Don't let the B*****s get you down.

mrs K

Jay said...

"My friend knew that the e-mail wasn't from me as there was terrible punctuation and bad grammar."

That's EXACTLY what I told Kell when I asked her if she had received the same email I did. haha

Glad you got your email and blog back. We were discussing you on Facebook and I was happy to get confirmation that you were okay there. Sorry you got hacked though. Such bastards!

I've decided to change my passwords on everything regularly now.

Shammickite said...

Yikes! What sort of jerks do that? I'm glad you managed to get back in business with all your internet sites, but I'm sure if that happened to me, I wouldn't have a clue how to remedy it.

betty said...

Jay told me about your problem. I am glad everything is resolved. I guess I need to pay more attention to my passwords, but I'm doing well to remember the ones I already have.

Anonymous said...

Tho the grammar and punctuation was off, the articulation was similar. ha! After reading it again, I decided it was bogus, because I figured you had enough CLOSER relatives and friends (to the heart and geographically)who would be able to help you, w/o you contacting ME.
I agree w/Shammickite, above, that I wouldn't know WHERE to start to rectify, either -- so thanks for walking us thru. Sorry for your loss of previous important emails. bummer! Glad you're OK in the end, tho, Peggy. Prayers for the child of God who stole your time and peace of mind for a time. Lord, have mercy. -P

Anonymous said...

-Cousin Paula :)

dogbait said...

Bummer, I've just landed in London to help out and I find out it's a scam. Oh, well, back home again.

Audrey said...

What puzzled me was the fact that the creep was actively monitoring your hacked account--I received the email, then hopped on FB to see if you were online and sent you a message. I received a reply back on FB!

So glad you are ok, but sorry for your trouble!

Peggy said...

I think the hacker got to me from my Facebook account which is why I STILL don't have it back yet. There is an ongoing investigation.

Joy Des Jardins said...

I'm so sorry that happened to you Peggy; but I'm glad you've recovered as well as you have. I guess that's something all of us should be well aware of. Good luck getting all the way back to normal again. Lots of hugs to you...

Anonymous said...

Hi, Just got back from holiday and found i too had received that e mail. Makes you wonder? Where do they get our e mail addresses?.

Peggy said...

Anonymous, you didn't sign that. I don't know who you are.

The e-mail addresses were harvested from my account. Anybody I ever sent an e-mail business or personal from that account got an e-mail from the hacker. Curiously, my dear husband didn't get one.

Susie said...

Well, I'm glad that you are ok...hackers suck. What a pain to have to fix everything up again...and to lose all those saved emails. ugh.l

Unknown said...

I'm glad it was only a hacker that got you. Davey's hotmail account just got hacked by someone attempting to sell junk to other people, so it's going around. My SIL (the one I don't like) got the "robbed in London" scam pulled on her, and had to dump all her accounts.

I miss you on Facebook. Hope you get things squared away soon.