Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Hacked

hackers look like this, right? so it's easy to spot them...

When I got home from a movie* tonight I saw that I had an email notification on my phone, as well as an alert notification. Not sure what the alert was for, I clicked on it and saw that it was having problems accessing my google account and it needed my password.

I entered it.

It didn't let me in.

I entered my password again.

It didn't let me in.

I went to my computer and opened up my email.

When I typed in my password it told me that they had detected suspicious activity and that I needed to get a verification code sent to my phone and then change my password. I did this, it let me in, and I saw that I had had some 'mail delivery notification' emails sent back to me saying that this meaningful message - http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eakononov%2Ecom%2Fimages%2Fagu%2Ephp - could not be sent to: (and it listed some different email addresses). I had two different emails like that, so I hit a reply all on what I had apparently sent and apologized for the email, saying I changed my password, so it wouldn't happen again.

After this was over I had a quick freak-out moment where I worried about my checking account (it's been hacked into and drained before, so I knew a moment of panic when I thought it might have happened again). I quickly signed into that and saw that I had nothing to worry about. The $5.13 in my account hadn't been touched (give or take some change :).

I then google-searched, 'how do email accounts get hacked' and this page came up. Nothing too helpful there. I already knew that I needed to change my password to stop it thanks to my brother-in-law who told me what to do when my yahoo account got hacked.

Good times.

*I saw 'limitless'. My first inclination is to say that I didn't really like it. My second one is to wonder if I need to see it again. My third is to remember a particularly disturbing scene and decide that I was right the first time. If you see it, let me know what you think.

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