Blogger: The real Michelle Ule
Location: Not in London, try Santa Rosa, California
The first call came while I was making dinner on a hectic Saturday night with the adorable grandtoddlers and my ailing husband. “Michelle,” asked the wife of a police officer. “Are you in Santa Rosa or London?”
I handed the one-year-old a graham cracker. “Santa Rosa, why?”
“I was just talking to you on Facebook. You said you were in London and had been held up by someone who stole all your money and you needed help.”
I laughed. “I’m home, but thanks for checking.”
In one of those you-can’t-make-this-up-scenarios, I had posted on World Magazine’s blog that very morning: “If you’re ever in a foreign country and need help, go to the US Embassy; don’t appeal to your friends on Facebook.”
I logged onto my account, but before I could do much more than note I’d been hacked, four other people called me, all of whom had “chatted” with the person we”ll call “the Imposter.” Unfortunately for the Imposter, she had tried to shake down the wife of a computer programmer, the mother of a soldier in Afghanistan who had seen me the day before, my tech-savvy niece, and a media specialist.
I hurried to security help and clicked on “Money transfer scams,” learning how frequently it happens. Within twenty minutes, I shut down my account and entered the twilight zone of disconnection from the Internet.
I could get on, but Facebook would not allow me access to my account until I changed all the settings on my e-mail account, claiming the phishing that got my Facebook account hacked must have come through e-mail, not them.
“Unlikely,” my husband said from his sick bed. He’d just read an article on this very subject.
I went back to the Facebook site and lied that I had changed all my passwords, then tried to log on to my Facebook account. Only to discover the account had a new e-mail address I’d never seen before. The Imposter had opened a yahoo account using my name. I think that frightened me the most of all.
I got back on by proving my e-mail address and then saw the damage that had been done. It felt creepy to think someone had gone to all that trouble to get into my account. And why? Reading through the exchanges with my friends and relatives–whom the Imposter had blocked from accessing my account as soon as they were onto her–I saw my niece had challenged the Imposter with a piece of family information: the name of one of the family babies. The Imposter explored through the photos and had the answer–which is when my niece called me.
I later discovered the Imposter had added “aps” to my account, which allowed the Imposter to switch things back and follow my moves once I regained control of the account.
I didn’t like any of this.
And then Facebook shut me down completely for “potential criminal activity.”
It took me five days to get restored into Facebook’s good graces, but it was a painful five days. Not only because I missed my FB friends, but because of having to change the passwords on all our accounts, “just in case.”
The very first thing we did when we entered the Information Highway fourteen years ago was open an AOL account. We’ve changed homes, schools, phone numbers, credit cards and our minds many times in the interim. Who could remember any of the passwords needed to change all that?
Social media hacking, hacking in general, is on the upswing, and as consumers we need to be prepared for it. It’s probably not even a question of if, but when, unless you take steps. Websites abound willing to help, but the first line of defense is a good password that is changed regularly–every three to six months. We hadn’t changed our password in 14 years.
What do you do to protect yourself on the Internet? Do you have any other suggestions?
Have you ever been hacked? How did you deal with it?
Wow Michelle, that’s quite a story! I could understand a hacker wanting access to credit card or banking information, but what would be the point of invading a Facebook account? The aps for tracking you sound very frightening but again, I’m wondering why? Good mystery writing material!
My Twitter and Facebook account have been hacked once quite awhile ago. It hasn’t happened again, but I have seen a couple of friends’ accounts messed with. Again, I don’t understand why.
I appreciated the suggestion of changing passwords frequently, but never dreamed it would be necessary every three to six months. The hard part for me is dreaming up names or words I can remember. I just discovered a great website combining Victorian and Steampunk names…just may be helpful in the future.
Thanks for sharing your wild story this morning and for the password tip.
OOPS…I sent my comment without saying I think my friends and relatives would be like yours…they wouldn’t believe I would be asking for money on Facebook. Mine would think I might be joiking with them…so that’s why I said I don’t understand why a hacker would invade a Facebook account. Do people really fall for those tricks?
Sorry you had to go through that Michelle!
Strong passwords are a good starting point. Making sure you log out of shared computers might help, too.
I have a friend who has been a flight attendant for over 20 years. She got an e-mail request from a flight attendant friend asking her to wire money immediately. It wasn’t unrealistic at all to imagine her friend in another country and she sent several thousand dollars. It didn’t occur to ask her a question only she would know. When the scam was exposed, her bank referred her to the FBI and they took the situation very seriously. I don’t know how it was resolved, but I do know in the weeks after it happened she was getting multiple calls each day from the FBI giving her updates.
Another version I’ve read about is youths calling elderly people and posing as a grandchild who had gone out of town without their parents permission and needed money to get home. They call in the middle of the night hoping the grandparents will not realize the voice doesn’t match that of the crying grandchild.
I’ve even heard of people reading obituaries and looking at the survivors to get basic information and preying on someone at their most vulnerable time.
I’m glad you weren’t scammed, but there are so many people who fall for it. Thanks for sharing and hopefully keeping others from going through the experience.
Creepy. I’m with you–why would some stranger want access to your (or anyone’s) Facebook account. I find the whole thing really weird and disturbing.
Since I’m on a few Yahoo Loops, I see how regularly people’s accounts get hacked by spammers. Your advice about changing your password often is solid.
My Facebook account was hacked and there was no question access was via FB. An app sent from a granddaughter’s hacked FB account asked me to check out a video she had posted. When I tried, I was told I needed to re-enter my password first. I hesitated, but it looked legit with FB logo and colours, so I did, and that’s all it took.
Hacking can be for various reasons. I didn’t think I had any info of interest to criminals, but the phishing gives access to our contact information, and allows infiltration of our friends’ accounts and personal data. That can mushroom into identity theft on a large scale. Like a locked house, privacy settings can be breached by hackers, so it pays to be cautious and watch for unusual account activity, AND change passwords regularly.
Michelle, yikes! So creepy…
Making sure your passwords are difficult to hack is another decent line of defense. Passwords that contain some capital letters, characters (such as the @ symbol or a question mark), and numbers mixed with the standard lowercase letters are stronger than a password that’s just the name of your dog, or something. Still, the bottom line is that we’re all vulnerable once we open ourselves up to the Internet. Frightening!
My daughter’s facebook was hacked and obscene messages went out from her account to everyone, including our pastor. She was mortified but we changed her password and sent out a status letting everyone know she’d been hacked. Most people figured it out, or posted on my wall and asked how long I grounded her. 🙂
Michelle, such valuable information! Another disconcerting thing…so many people with actually the SAME name as ours!
Scary stuff indeed. My hotmail account was hacked recently, but my friends knew right away because I don’t use that account to email anyone. It’s just for newsletters I sign up for.
I’ve had my identity stolen once. It was ugly. In addition to changing passwords often, I don’t save financial information at sites I’m not very familiar with. Some sites allow you to save your credit card information to make shopping easier. I do that with maybe one or two big vendors, like Amazon.
My hubby uses some type of software/form (technology dummy here) that provides the vendor a fictitious credit card number for his purchases. It’s tied into our actual account somehow, but the information is all encrypted.
Sorry to hear you had to endure such a trying time. Thanks for sharing your story.
I guess one of the lessons I took away is someone as “minor” as me could get hacked. I still don’t know where they got my password because up until February, I’d have said I’m savvy enough to recognize phishing schemes.
I already blocked most aps from Facebook, including Farmville and the like (sorry, farmers). This has taught me, however, to check the privacy settings frequently and to make sure only my chosen aps are accessible on Facebook.
I wish I could come up with some ideas on how to keep track of all the different password accounts–here at work this morning I’ve already gone through some 40 items trying to find our password for one of our vendors–without compromising the security. It’s tricky and probably only going to get worse in the years to come.
I like your husband’s software, Cheryl. I may have to look for something like it in the future.
Thanks for sharing, and I’m sorry for those of you who have been hacked!
Wow, what scary stuff. I do need to change my email and FB passwords because I haven’t in a long time.
One of my credit cards was compromised years ago (read: pre Google days). I rarely used the card, but happened to buy something with it one day. I got a call from the company that night asking where I was. Someone had used my name and the same credit card info that day to buy things at a store that sounded like a place I would never set foot in — on the opposite side of the country. I was glad they checked into it so quickly, but wondered what kind of mess it would’ve been if I hadn’t used the card the same day.
The admin account for my website was hacked last year (another case of why me, of all people?). My host customer service people were great and I got things up and running again with a much more complicated password. I use uppercase, lowercase, and symbols all mixed up. I think they tried one more time because I got an email saying someone had requested my password. But I haven’t heard anything since so am hoping the scummy folks have decided I’m not worth the time and effort.
Michelle,
Thanks SO much for posting this and for all the great comments. One question, how do you block aps from Facebook or others?
Thanks again!
I see I spelled “apps” wrong . . . to block apps on Facebook, go to your privacy settings. At the bottom left corner, is a spot to look at “apps and websites.” Click on that and you can see what apps access your FB account and which websites are linked. You can then edit that.
FB morphs so often, it’s important to review your privacy and account settings on a regular basis. My colleague has not been able to read my wall recently because I ramped up the security so high–which may explain why no one has been commenting on my brilliant status updates . . .
I’ve changed that, now. 🙂
In another you-can’t-believe-the-timing-of-this, one of our writer’s FB accounts was hacked yesterday.
He’s changed his password.
A friend of mine, who is a travel agent, sent me a FB message that she had been robbed while in Thailand and needed money. I believed the message until I re-read it and noticed all the !!!! marks. I figured she could be in Thailand, she could have been robbed, but there is not way she would have used up a lifetime allotment of exclaimation marks to request money.
Sure enough, she was hacked too. The Imposter set up a fake account in her name and MANY of our friends FRIENDED the Imposter without realizing the problem. Agh. It was a mess.
And, yes, we believe it was a FACEBOOK error, but I don’t think they admitted it.
I just changed my FB password. More secure (yea!), but harder to type (sigh). Thanks for the nudge, Michelle. I needed it.
Hey this is really very good post. I liked it.
Nice Post Admin!! this is really very good Article.
If you are facing any problem your Netflix account, Please call us today!