Friday, March 15, 2013

Hacker Finds Pris

Fair disclosure to everyone who communicates with me via my personal Yahoo account: It looks as if the same person(s) who hacked into Grandma Bonnie Peters' account last winter may have found their way into mine.

Since, so far as I know, we all know to use e-mail only to bring publicly available information to each other's attention, this is probably more of a nuisance than a disaster. However, youall may want to save any strange e-mails from me that you may have received, and share these e-mails with Yahoo to help them track down the hacker.

Here's what's happened so far: Earlier this morning, "at 6 p.m. EET," Yahoo sent an automatic e-mail reporting that someone hacked into my e-mail from Turkey. I also received a link sent to me and a batch of e-friends. I didn't click on the link, but it looks like a commercial link.

Gentle Readers, I think you know I wouldn't send you commercial links by e-mail. If paid to promote someone's business, I'd put the link in an advertorial post right here.

The hacker also tried connecting my account with services I don't use, including Facebook and Flickr, and also (ooohhh, this is so annoying) "updated" the account to icky, ugly, inefficient, and apparently more vulnerable Yahoo Neo. I've demanded Yahoo Classic back, but meanwhile Yahoo is telling everybody that they're receiving a high volume of this kind of complaints at this time.

It can happen to any of us, Gentle Readers. Please make sure that any information you e-mail is public information. No links to a bank account (unless you have a special Paypal account with no more than ten dollars in it). No real addresses for private homes. No real names. No family pictures. And if you want only the person to whom you're writing to be in on your business plans, send them by real mail only.

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