Hacked

One of the more interesting things that happened while we were away for the wedding is that all my accounts got hacked.  I can't even begin to tell you what a pain that whole ordeal was.  You see, both my email accounts and my Facebook account were all hacked into.  And then the jerk changed all my secondary email addresses in there, so that I couldn't go through the "Forgot My Password" process and get back in.  No.  What I ended up doing was having my mom fill out a lengthy google form over the phone, proving that I do, indeed, own my email address and that some poophead had taken it over. 

Said poophead was sending out emails as me to everyone in my address book - everyone aside from my parents and Bo - saying that I was being held at gunpoint in the UK and to send money asap because I was freaked out.  The hacker was using my friends' info on Facebook to make emails slightly accurate, which is extremely scary.  I had an onslaught of text messages, emails, phone calls, Linked In messages, and Facebook messages from people asking if I was ok.  And because Faceook locked my account for 24 hours, I couldn't reply right away, fueling the worry. 

It was an entire day of mayhem to put it lightly.  I'm mostly back to operational again, aside from having my entire Gmail inbox wiped out - all 10,000+ messages disappeared.  I've submitted a form to Google, but I haven't even wrapped my brain around the reality of that yet.

Lesson?  Give yourself crazy complicated passwords that are all different from each other.  Otherwise, you risk having your sister and your mom call you at 5am worried that you're ok.