Learning process
I consider myself pretty web and scam savvy. But my ebay and gmail accounts were hacked today.
I spent the last couple of hours getting problems resolved and changing passwords and hoping that this guy only was in it to make a quick buck via my account without delving deeper into my e-mail account for any possible other information about me. At the very least this person: changed my ebay password. Changed my phone number in ebay, because ebay apparently now has a new automated program that will call you and alert you to bids done in unfamiliar places.
Now I have to be very vigilant in watching all of my accounts.
Things just aren’t going well for me right now.
I thought my iPod died earlier today too, but it was just trying to scare the crap out of me. Now I learned that my Thanksgiving might be ruined, thanks to a fucking hairbrained person in an incident unrelated to this one.
I’ve been trying to keep my spirits up. I just don’t know how much longer I can do it.
Oh, and the best part? The ebay tech who helped me regain control of my account (and reversed charges and cancelled an auction for an expensive stereo) sent me a link to a tutorial on how to avoid phishing.
It was insultingly elementary. And the thing is, I knew all the answers on how to avoid it. All of them. But I still got hacked.
Let that be a lesson. I’m still learning all sorts of things. And that includes the fact that this is an ugly world.
One small bright note… if you hadn’t lost your face plate, you wouldn’t have been on eBay. If you hadn’t been on eBay, you may not have seen about the hacker and your gmail, et al, until it was way late in the process.
It’s a very small something. Probably not very comforting, though.
There is that.
Actually, I can credit my wonderful dad. He was sending me a link of another auction to check, so I tried to log into my account and that’s when I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t have noticed for a while. Also, it helped that you told me you were e-mailing me but I wasn’t seeing the email, so then I saw them going in the trash.
Do you know exactly how you were hacked? Was it a Windows vulnerability, or something you yourself did accidentally? It would be good to know, so that others can avoid what happened to you. I know we do quite a bit of buying via ebay, and we haven’t given a thought to security.
I explained some of it privately.
Without getting into too much detail, one should just be very wary of any link you click on. Mouse over it, for example, to see where it really goes.