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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Random Thoughts - Security & Hacking




Last Thursday was one of my worst days in recent history but am thankful only few people received the hateful emails or saw the vulgar pictures on my blog before I could repair it.

I want to give a Big Shout Out to author David Fingerman (I will be reviewing his new book Spyder tomorrow) and Lily of Lilium's Realm for alerting me to the problems on my blog and that someone else was chatting as "me".

We have learned the Group that was responsible for the attacks and that over 12,000 of the email addresses were stolen from Writerspace.com.  My blog was accessed by ISP addresses from France, Germany, Portugal and the UK.  I have of course read enough mysteries to know that the people using those addresses could be just down the street and routing them through those countries.

I don't know about the other blogs that were attacked but mine had the most vile, filthy, vulgar, gory and racist pictures and comments I have seen in my entire life.  Yes, it caused chaos in my life, I almost passed out when I saw them.  Thankfully my daughter was here to help me with the great task of restoring my blog, changing my passwords several times and completing all the necessary forms to report this invasion.  I am also glad that the credit card listed in my Amazon account expired last month.

How has my life changed this past week?  I am changing my passwords daily and I am sure to never use the same one on multiple sites.  I click the DETAILS button at the bottom of my email account several times each day to be sure it is not being accessed by anyone but me.  I am sure I log out of every site before I leave my computer each day and I hate the fact that some group was able to get away with such a travesty.  My friends and I that were hacked had no "score to be settled" from this group that attacked us.  I hope they are held responsible for their actions and made to pay for the drama, chaos, and any money they scammed from any of us.

  • Were you hacked and attacked?  
  • How are you dealing with the invasion?  
  • If you were not attacked have you still taken measures to insure you online safety?

Please add your thoughts to this post.  
Share how you feel about this topic.  
I love hearing from all of you!!!


4 comments:

Linda Kish said...

I had info stolen according to a few emails I got from some banking and other secure sites plus I ended up with a few nasty trojans spying on me. I amy changing passwords. Very frustrating. But at least I didn't have the problems you had with vulgar pictures. I didn't get strange things from writerspace.com that I am aware of. Or, is that just how they got our info?

Steve Capell said...

I had to change several passwords ... I first found out from a courtesy email from facebook that I needed to change my password and then I got an email from twitter. So I changed all my email passwords and my Blog password. I hope the people that find it amusing to destroy other people sites get caught and brought to justice. Many years ago I read a book called the The Cuckoo's Egg about how one man actions awakened the world up to the fact that computer crime was real and dangerous. His diligence finally paid off when the person that was causing the computer crime was found in Germany. The book was intriguing!

dollycas aka Lori said...

Linda, I believe that's just where they got the info.

Steve, sounds like a book I need to read. Some of the pictures on my blog were Nazi/Hilter pics nd one of the ISP's was Germany. Definitely a very disturbed person hacked my blog.

holdenj said...

I was off line a couple days, but did get an email from writerspace about the problem (I get a couple newsletters from them). I have been changing some passwords too and I've noticed a ton more spam in the spam folder in the past week or so.
Glad you daughter was able to help you out so much!