Hijacked!

Very early last Tuesday morning, my email was hacked and destroyed my ability to access my email, Face book page, my blog, and more.   This lasted more than a week.  Gmail took 6 days to respond to my "I suspect my computer has been hacked" posting to their "Help" page.  Gmail has no human contact potential for these incidents.

The most malicious act: every single address in my contact list was altered.  The letters "ae" were inserted before the @ sign.  All 2,716 contacts.  Nice.

So, Hackers: read this. Not sure what you expected to gain from all of this mayhem, but aside from a little labor-intensive time to recreate my on line life, and using the hard copies and spreadsheets on the Flute Pro Shop computers, we are back and better than ever. 


I have learned a few things I would like to share so that others don't have to go through the same insanity:
1.  When you are not on your email page, shut it down.  Don't leave it signed on when the computer is in "sleep" mode.
2.  Use G-mail's 2-step verification.
3.  Don't use an unsecured public network. IE: airport, cafe, or hotel.
4.  Back up everything!
5.  Make sure your router's security is up to date and turned on.
6.  Invest in the best firewall protection out there.

I am wondering: what if all this creativity and technological know-how were to be used for something positive in the world?

Hmm...