Hey there, [apologies for cross posting]
I thought I’d send out a word of warning to my comrades today after having a very upsetting experience yesterday, whereby I believe someone has hacked in to my gmail and ebay accounts. If anyone can offer any constructive advice, I’d like to hear from you. At the moment, I feel completely violated – properly cyber raped. Who knows what will happen next.
Also on stream here: http://stream.lbigroup.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/cyber_raped_having_your_gmail_and_ebay_accounts_violated_and_then_being_loc/
Here’s what happened:
- Was checking my gmail account on Sunday afternoon and saw some emails from ebay saying I was trying to sell a Nikon D40x. I haven’t ever sold anything on ebay so I was very surprised.
- I logged into ebay and couldn’t find any action to remove the item from the listing. I’m sure it was there, but because of my panic, I really couldn’t see it, so I just set a ridiculous reserve price. A bit stupid, but what could I do?
- When I returned to my gmail account I had an email from ebay suggesting that there was some suspicious activity. ‘good ebay’ I thought. It even had some tips of what to do next to bring back the account, and to change the details of my email account.
- So I tried to change my ebay account details but it was too late – I was locked out
- I went back to my gmail account and tried to change my details there. Too late again, someone/something had changed my details again.
- Panicked. Near tears. Girlfriend in ear saying ‘we’ve got to go to the cinema, we’ll be late’.
- Tried to do the forgotten password but my secondary email address (where it will be sent) was from a job I left 3 years ago. Uh oh!
- Explored the various other links and info and found out that I can only get my password sent to another email address if I waited 5 days after no email activity. But, would a hacker really not use my account for 5 days after hacking into it? I don’t think so.
- I tried to follow various forms, email addresses etc. but no luck, there was no action for my situation and google said that they wouldn’t waive the 5 day wait thing.
- So then I tried to go into all my regularly used accounts to change the details, hoping that I didn’t alert my gmail hacker into my new email address and password combination: HSBC (can’t change details – bizarrely remembered the stupid id), John Lewis Partnership Card (can’t remember details), Flickr (easy), Facebook (easy), Ning (easy), linkedin (easy), expedia (easy), Egg (easy) etc. etc.
- Now I am trying to pick up the pieces. I will await some contact from Google, I will try to change the details on some other accounts, I will probably have to inform my banks so that they can reset my details and I have to contemplate the repercussions of someone having my gmail and ebay account and me never being able to access either again.
If anyone has any suggestions of what I can do, then please let me know. Otherwise, let this be a lesson to you all:
back up your contacts
- don’t store login details in your gmail account (I always knew this was a bad idea, but how else was I suppose to remember how to login to my flipping HSBC / John Lewis accounts with their obtuse username password, keys etc.?)
- be careful where you expose your email address (mine’s on facebook – is that a good idea?)
- watch out for ebay scams
- check your secondary email address
- backup your data (not really relevant here, but hey, you should always do it)
- try not to use the same username / email address and password combination for all your accounts (I can’t see myself changing this one easily)
