So, another friend had her email hacked and ended up asking all her contacts for help getting home from London.
But those shenanigans didn’t particularly hack me off. I’ve seen the “Stuck in London” ploy before. I was not, however, sure that my friend had. So I skipped over to Facebook to send her a little note and lo! There she was on Facebook!
How delightfully convenient. “Hey,” I chatted, “I’ll bet you’ve been getting tons of emails about your ‘unexpected’ London trip.” I added a smiley face, even.
“Am really stuck,” she chatted back. (No frowny face or anything.)
“Really?” I asked. ‘Cause I’d just seen her the day before. That’s some nervy hacker, I thought, chatting away on Facebook, trying to catch any friends who might be socially networking.
Granted, I was annoyed, but still not majorly hacked off. I mean, it takes A LOT to hack me off. And then I saw my friend that evening.
Naturally, we spoke of the email and London and the Facebook chatting, too. What’s the (wide web) world coming to? Apparently, what it’s coming to is hackers getting into email accounts and social networks and CHANGING PASSWORDS.
That’s right. My friend couldn’t get back into her own email since the hacker had changed her password. And what can be done to prevent this hijacking? Turns out, absolutely nothing.
That’s what really hacked me off.
P.S. You might want to make sure that your Facebook and email are not tied into each other. It won’t keep your email safe, but at least your friends won’t be chatting with despicable hackers.
Cathy C. Hall Writes 
Wow, Cathy! That is just horrible! I cannot believe that kind of stuff is happening! The e-mails are bad enough, but someone being in her Facebook account and pretending to be her?! OMG! "There oughta be a law"…
I KNOW! I didn't get into it with the Fake friend, but several of her Real friends did.I heard the Real friends had some choice words for the hacker. What exactly they chose to say, I really can't repeat! 🙂
Yikes … that's really frightening!
Ugh. Just…ugh. (That's my pithy comment of the day.)
Kelly, it IS frightening. Especially if someone hacks into a business email. I'm working on safe-guarding my business right now!To paraphrase Madeline: "Seriously UGH."
This exact same thing happened to my sister-in-law. Only she was in Africa instead of London. It scared me so bad that I went through and changed my password to my own e-mail account.
Oh, no. What an awful situation. Why can't those clever hackers put their talents to good use?Donna V.http://donnasbookpub.blogspot.com
Probably a good idea to change passwords up every couple of months. As long as you can remember the new passwords!
Having just gone thru this annoyance myself, my biggest fear is I WON'T remember which password I'm on!!!!They hacked through the ATT/Yahoo web portal, not my Outlook Express. They stole my address book there. Thank goodness I had fewer addresses on the web address book.
Yeah, I keep a camouflaged notebook with all my passwords in it. It may look like a sausage, but it's my notebook.Dang. Now I have to find a new camouflage for my notebook.
Holy cow! Good thing I have four different email addresses; I hope they can't zap all four at once. (They can't, can they, Master Y?) I never jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, but I'm getting ready to. Finally been worn down. My 16-year-old said she'll be my technical adviser. 🙂