Hello, everyone! I’m sure you were expecting a nice rant on yesterday’s post, and, rest assured, one is forthcoming.
Last night, however, I was spending hours upon hours deleting spam and other such crap that had been sent from my Twitter account.
So here’s the story:
I always thought of myself as being very security-oriented online.
So you can imagine my surprise when I couldn’t log in to Twitter. I shrugged that off pretty quickly, though. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d forgotten a password.
Then I saw my inbox.
Everyone was asking me, “Are you a hacker, or have you been hacked?”
And I could see why.
But I, of course, remained composed and rational as I formulated a plan of action…
And clicked the ‘Change Password’ button so many times the browser did everything but flip me off…
(Everything. It was creepy.)
So, like every intelligent, self-sufficient adult with a computer problem, I drove down to Best Buy and calmly and clearly explained my problems to the Geek Squad…
Who took my tablet and figured out how to get it to let me change my password on more time…
While I did some deep breathing exercises…
I thanked them, and asked what else I could do to make sure I was (and would stay) hacker-free. They said I shouldn’t have to do anything else, but I remained skeptical.
Fortunately, one of my followers on Twitter who was still speaking to me sent me this link to an article she’d written about what to do if you get hacked:
http://ow.ly/grzwZ (You can also find it by Googling “redhead riter twitter hack” It’s very helpful.)
The article told me how to take a few extra precautions and made me feel alot better.
I then Tweeted a mass warning not to open messages or links from my account, began the arduous process of deleting all the spam that had been sent by direct message,
and tried to message apologies to the people on the recieving end of the messages…
But only four went through…
And I felt very lonely.
I couldn’t blame the people who had blocked me, but, over spring break, I had a couple of days I spent doing nothing but
Tweeting, finding good people and organizations to follow, direct messaging, following back, accepting offers to do book reviews, and generally trying to build a good reputation for myself online.
(Then I realized I was starting to look like Johnny Depp in The Secret Window, so I took a shower and combed my hair.)
Now it looked like I was back at square one, and I began having less-than-charitable thoughts about the hackers responsible…
But, then I got a couple of messages back about how it was alright, that everyone gets hacked on Twitter- like it was a rite of passage…
And my three-sentence-long post yesterday brought in four times the normal traffic I get in a day.
So, I guess you could look a this as a heartwarming story about good triumphing in the end, or something…
Unless you happen to hear a news story in the near future about a couple of hackers who have literally been ‘hacked.’ heh heh… What?
theoccasionalmeatcleaver 