Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Hacker Alert!

My facebook account was compromised as well as my email account, including ALL my addresses and inbox messages.

Last night, I forgot to log out of facebook and that's how they got in; the hacker was from Hong Kong.
Here is my suggestion to you:  if you have not done so already, be sure your email password and facebook passwords are different.  Mine were exactly the same (oh trusting me) and that is how they accessed my accounts.

I'm sorry some of you received an email stating I was stranded in the London airport and got mugged.  None of that is true. 

I hope you never have to go through what I am experiencing today; it's been a challenge to reset all passwords.  You never know how many places you've got a password at-- until this happens.

7 comments:

Mary Beth Brath said...

Thanks for posting this Linda.

Cecelia Lyden said...

Linda this is the second time in 2 months that a friend of mine has had this happen to them--I received a similar email from a high school friend while I was in Fla.claiming that he had lost all his money in London, blah, blah. I and other artist friends have also received bogus requests to purchase art from our websites--the one friend was kept on the hook for weeks till the "customer" finally made an unusual request for money and he realized that the potential sale was bogus. He had even checked with the bank to see if this crook's check had cleared--the bank said it had--they were tricked as well. Luckily, I had read about his kind of fraud and was completley skeptical when my crook asked to purchase about 6 paintings from my site--really? 6 paintings unseen? I spamed the email. Sorry this happened to you and thanks for the advice.

Ron Donoughe said...

Yes this happens a lot. I am not a fan of facebook and have decided not to use it after a friend who teaches at Carnegie Mellon showed his students how easily the information provided can be used by hackers. Facebook also owns the rights to your images! That is what you agree to when you sign up. I also think all your info will eventually be used for marketing purposes. I know it has some great benefits, but it scares me.

Dianne Lorden said...

Linda, if it's any consolation, I was pretty sure you would have written a more coherent message - even under stress! It did seem to be hacked, but I'm very glad to know you are safe and sound! And I appreciate Mary Beth sending out the early alert, as well. Thanks for your insights on this.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your information Ron, Cecelia and Dianne. As of now, facebook will no longer be used by me. I've tried tonight to change the password but for some reason, (and I think it's still under hacker control), I've been blocked "temporarily" by the facebook security team. It was a fun thing while it lasted to be connected to friends; but I'm not going to participate in it any longer. I hope that blogger doesn't prove to be a hoax at some point either. We've all become too "linked in" to each other; I agree Ron, it scared me enough to stop.

Julie Riker said...

Sorry you had to go through all of that Linda. How did you ever find out where and who was doing it?

Unknown said...

When I first got into Facebook that morning, there was a notification from FB that my account had suspicious activity on it. FB is the one that notified me what happened and where it originated and what they got into. That's where I found out they were from Hong Kong. As far as I know, my virus protection/firewall kept my computer safe from them. I now turn it off every night!