Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Days Of Being Hacked

On 30 October 2010, my Facebook account was compromised, which simply means, it was hacked. :P
It's quite shameful for me to say so, since I am an IT Professional!
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Albeit a technical IT personnel. :P

How it happened? Guess I was sleepy at that time, and accidently clicked on some dubious link, and click OK upon system warning. Too fast clicking sometimes can be dangerous.
One of my ex-colleagues said it must be some hanky panky links.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
How did he know?

So my Facebook account was hacked. I think it's just some kiddy script, and it continued to capture my Google account, as the password used at that point of time for my Facebook and Google accounts were the same.
That is a mistake.

Alas, I am lazy to have too many passwords, like most people do.
One password fits all may be convenient, but prove to be a nuisance when something happems.
So the result now is that my passwords for various accesses are now quite different, and it definitely burn some brain cells away.
Ahhhhhhh!!!!! My cells!

So what did I do?

The hacker went on to change my email association in Facebook, and as such, I cannot report or reset my password to gain back my Facebook account.
I can only report to Facebook, and give them another email address to notify me of possible resolution of the compromise.

My Google account was hacked. I needed this more than my darn Facebook account.
I went on to report to Google that my account was hacked.
It looked promising with the information they asked, and it's a headache to answer them.
Questions about when you start using Google and its other applications to even the date level.
Goodness? Are they nuts? I think they are.

Took a while for me to investigate my own Google information, and keep trying for a few times.
Finally got back my Google account only about 3 days later.
Damaged done? Some of my emails in the Inbox were deleted. Those that were moved to the "Labe" folders were still there. Lucky lucky.

Lesson learnt for Google account: Setup recovery information, as well as security question. It didn't force users to do that I think, and I was ....hmmmmm.... lazy again at that time. Too long ago anyway.

Now to Facebook.
Send them the report about my hacked account.
Only got an automated reply, which keep telling me to check my email for some other email notification from Facebook so that I can reverse the situation.
Nuts! My email account was hacked! How to expect me to see the notification mail from Facebook?

I've gotten back my Google account. Facebook? Social account only, and it's fine to do without it.
It took many many many days before you receive a proper reply from Facebook.
They have too many compromised accounts to handle I guess. heheheh
After corresponding for a short while, I managed to get back my Facebook account about 20 odd days later.
Damage done: All my photos and videos were gone. My information were changed quite totally, forcing me to re-marry my wife, for example. :P

Other than that, not much was done. I only know Mafia Wars activities were done during those 20 odd days. Kinda stupid and lame to hack account to play game huh?
I was more afraid that he would send stupid links to my friends in Facebook and cause them to be hacked too.
Alas, I can't do much.

Anyway, the saga is over.
I will know what to do if it happens again.
HAHAHAHAHA.
if it happens to you, you can consult me. :P