Hacked

The day after my trip to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, I worked a few hours at the greenhouse. I came home tired, sat in front of my computer to catch up on my emails. But before accessing my account, I checked my phone messages. The first one was from my daughter. The message went something like change your password, someone got into your email account. The second, third, and fourth messages were from other family members and friends asking if I was okay, and to call them ASAP. Another message asked if I was back? I was back, and okay, and puzzled. I tried to access my email account and was denied entry. I kept at it for a while when the telephone rang. A friend from Texas asked me what was going on?

What was going on was that some LOSER hacked into my account, sent out emails to everyone in my address book. Whoever that Loser was...they sent an email to everyone, and this was the email that was sent to me. This is exactly what they said: "Hello, I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's due to the situation of things right now. I'm stuck in London, England with my family right now, we came down here for a short vacation then I was robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone were stolen at GUN POINT, it's such a crazy experience for us, we need help flying back money, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is we still have our passports and return tickets but currently having troubles paying off the hotel bills and also getting a cab to take us to the airport. Please I need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as I'm back home, I promise. Thank you, Mary."

First of all, my friends and family know that I never carry or use my cell phone. Heck, I don't even know my cell telephone number. The second thing is that I would never fly on a plane. I hate planes. If I did go away, it wouldn't be to London. All my family was at home working, and they were not with me. Since I am a freelance writer, I would never use sloppy grammar as exhibited in the email, and I do know the difference between a comma and a period.

The phone calls kept coming from Cleveland, Texas, Missouri, and New York. Everyone pretty much knew that I wasn't sending out these emails but they were still worried about me. Even my cousin called and said that he knew that I didn't send out the email but he wanted to help me. He offered to send money and the response he got was for a post office box number. He emailed and asked for some kind of information that only he and I would know. The emails stopped.

What I had to do...spend a number of hours on the telephone.

1. I called the bank and set up an appointment for the next day to change my accounts. That took 1-1/2 hours.

2. I called my major credit card carrier and had a Fraud Alert placed on my transactions.

3. I called Equifax and set up a Fraud Alert. It was a 3-1 report to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

4. Called my Financial Advisor, who in turn would contact the police officer, who gives talks for his firm on Identity Theft.

5 Changed all my passwords to every account on the computer. Which I now have seemed to have forgotten with all the confusion.

I spent a lot of time on the phone and at my computer. Hopefully, I caught everything in time. The only problem is that I can no longer get into my email account. All I want is my email address book and give a heads up to everyone who is in my book. I am disturbed that the hacker does know my name. I am irritated that I lost my address book and a lot of emails that I kept on file for my writing information, and for sentimental reasons. I am angry to be locked out of my own email account!

But today, my daughter helped me to get back into my hacked email account with a new password. My address book was empty. The hacker took it. That person also set something up to have all emails forwarded to him/her. My daughter was able to change that. I went through my emails that I saved and found that I had left some information that the hacker also must have. Thank God I changed my banking accounts and put out a Fraud Alert. But I am still worried. I did copy the emails that I saved and wanted, and deleted them. But there is a trail of every email that I have sent that the hacker probably read.

I doubt very much if I will even use my old account. It was like going back into my private space that had been occupied and vandalized by someone I didn't know. I was uncomfortable. None of it felt right. I liked my email address name but I don't think I will be using that email account ever again.

Maybe Fox Mulder from the old X-Files series on television was right..."Trust No One!"