Making Lemonade

I am making lemonade out of the huge amount of lemons thrown at me today. As seen from my previous post, my facebook account was hacked. That in it of itself would not be that big of a deal, or so I thought. But the person used it to emotionally black mail people who care about me. The person instant messaged friends on facebook saying I desperately needed the money, I am summarizing, the person was a bit more convincing than that. Friends and family were put in a position of concern for my well being. If you were one of them, I am so sorry. I am not going to elaborate more, but people were hurt and for that I feel horrible and responsible since it was my account.

I consider myself to be pretty good with my security, which is why I NEVER do any of those facebook quizzes or applications, I was too afraid, but I was hacked anyway. I still don't know how it happened. I have a theory, but it was too easy, so I hope facebook is more secure than that. And facebook has been zero help. Even after I knew this was going on and started contacting people, the person was still on asking for money. I was locked out of the account and helpless to do anything but try to contact people via email and phone. For the record, I would/will never ask for money over any media outlet. So if anyone hijacks my blog and posts I need money - I would never do that. I am a pretty industrious person and can take care of myself. Afterall, I backpacked through Europe with little money and I even ended up in the wrong country in the middle of the night and survived. I hope this happening to me will help others.

As for making lemonade, I have learned a lesson today on securing my electronic info better and that I need to be on the computer less. I feel like God has been on me about that one for a while now and apparently I needed to be hit over the head to get the message. As much as I hate to give up the social network of facebook, I think I am done, I just can't stand the thought of going through that again. As for the blog, I think I am going to set it as private. Brian has insisted on this for some time and I did not honor his request because I knew that it would be harder on our less tech savy family members to read, but now they will just have to get on board or give up on hearing about us. The hacker may have gotten personal information from my blog to help convince people on facebook. I really hate to do this, because I innocently stalk a few blogs and I don't really know the people and would not ask to be allowed to read their blog if they were private, so I know that there are a few people out there that do the same here, but I have to do this for our own protection. Internet Fraud is only getting worse, so it is time I get more proactive. So I will go private soon and if you would like to be added, send me a request.

Another lemon, in trying to secure my email, since I was not sure how much the hacker had access to, I somehow disabled my email account. I don't think it was hacked, I think I messed up trying to make it more secure. So for now, I have no email either. Brian called today my tech holiday, since I had no email for most of the day and no facebook. I am working on getting email back, but free email services are not always the most helpful, hence the free part. They are working with me, so if you have emailed me, I hope to get back to you, but I may not if I lose access to my account.