I got hacked
The first e-mail I have sent was sometimes in 1994, so I’ve been very much alive and active online for a whopping 13 years. I’ve got a fleet of e-mail addresses, a long list of forum accounts, and many logins for various online services. 9 years ago I was launching my own tentative of a site, on Tripod. Remember Tripod, Hotbot, Lycos, Netscape and all those buzzwords back then? Gosh I’m old.
One would think it had to happen sooner. Having an account hacked into, I mean. Nope. I think I defy statistics. This must be some sort of a record, to be so prolific online and only have the first intrusion today. And it wasn’t even something important — it was my 10 year old eBay account, which only saw around a dozen transactions over the years. How pathetic is that? Not even my Yahoo! account.
So here I am, talking with eBay customer support about unlocking my account, and unsure whether I should worry or laugh. I have no idea how it happened, since those principles that kept me safe so far have not been crossed. I’m thinking of an exploit on eBay’s site used to spam sellers with ads through the “Ask seller a question” option. This would make more sense than breaking my random consonnants and digits password, always changed less than a month ago. I mean, you’d probably screw up the login even if I spelled out the password to you, twice.
For the peace of mind, I just took a tour on my major accounts and gave them fresh, random passwords. The eBay account lock-out has been addressed within 3 hours. Now I think I’ll celebrate this glitch in a perfect score, the reminder that even with the best protective measures in place, mistakes do happen. It’s only natural, and it had to happen. Issue contained, damage insignificant, moving on.
Have you been hacked? How did you deal with it?
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 am
Never been hacked, though I did forget my own password a couple of times =)). How do you keep track of your random, consonants passwords, btw ?
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:14 am
Technically, I wasn’t hacked; just an account I have was compromised without my intervention. My only flaw would be the password — which I really doubt could be cracked, given its complexity. I’m taking the challenge of using even longer passwords now.
How does this work? I generate several random passwords once a month. They’re really a pain to learn and make absolutely no sense (especially without vowels), but they become an automatism after 2-3 days of use. It helps NOT to use password managers or the option to keep yourself logged in. After you get used to this process, in a matter of months you’ll be an expert in quickly learning weird, meaningless codes. Not something you’d proudly write on your resume, but a good skill from a security point of view.