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?