Friday, March 18, 2011

Hacked -Identity theft

Imagine my horror last Tuesday morning when I can not log in to my yahoo account and then someone from the office printed an email that was supposedly sent by me asking help and money because I was in Spain and I lost my wallet and all belongings and that my passport was being held by the hotel management because I need to pay them this certain amount. I know right there and then that my account was hacked. It was then I opened my facebook account and saw all the private messages from friends and relatives telling me that my account was hacked. 

I know this can happen to anyone and had actually happened to some and the scam mail it sent to my contacts was an old type of scam but I began to worry when I tried retrieving my account and found out that the hacker did only change my password but my security  questions as well. And the hacker even replied to one of my cousins email (in our native language) so I know he/she must be a Filipino. 

I tell you how it fells..It's scary. My mind went thinking so fast, my personal details, my other accounts and most of all my paypal account and of course I won't forget to mention identity theft-where someone steal your identity and use it for their own advantage, charge your credit card, use it for fraud and stuff like that. I don't have identity theft protection like the one being offered by IdentityHawk. Side note : if you want to be protected from identity thieves-you might want to consider getting your self one now.

Oh well, back to my story- I was able to get it back (thank God, Yahoo takes you back to your old security questions if you think your account was compromised) It was locked for 12 hours and I have to wait that long but still am grateful I got it back now, will probably make a step by step post on how to retrieved email account soon. I changed my password and I was told I have to change at least once every 2 months.

Who among us here have the same experience? Were you scared too? Did you retrieve your email back or just created a new one?

1 comment:

  1. This happened to one of our friends recently. I'm sorry that this happened to you, but I'm glad you got it resolved. I hate thieves.

    Have a terrific weekend. :)

    ReplyDelete