Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Tuesday Tip Revisited or Oooooh, Those Hackers Hack Me Off

So, another friend had her email hacked and ended up asking all her contacts for help getting home from London.

But those shenanigans didn't particularly hack me off. I've seen the "Stuck in London" ploy before. I was not, however, sure that my friend had. So I skipped over to Facebook to send her a little note and lo! There she was on Facebook!

How delightfully convenient. "Hey," I chatted, "I'll bet you've been getting tons of emails about your 'unexpected' London trip." I added a smiley face, even.

"Am really stuck," she chatted back. (No frowny face or anything.)

"Really?" I asked. 'Cause I'd just seen her the day before. That's some nervy hacker, I thought, chatting away on Facebook, trying to catch any friends who might be socially networking.

Granted, I was annoyed, but still not majorly hacked off. I mean, it takes A LOT to hack me off. And then I saw my friend that evening.

Naturally, we spoke of the email and London and the Facebook chatting, too. What's the (wide web) world coming to? Apparently, what it's coming to is hackers getting into email accounts and social networks and CHANGING PASSWORDS.

That's right. My friend couldn't get back into her own email since the hacker had changed her password. And what can be done to prevent this hijacking? Turns out, absolutely nothing.

That's what really hacked me off.

P.S. You might want to make sure that your Facebook and email are not tied into each other. It won't keep your email safe, but at least your friends won't be chatting with despicable hackers.