Phishing – Don’t Get Caught

If you’ve ever had your identity stolen, or your social media account hacked, then you have most likely been the victim of “phishing” (pronounced fishing)

I sincerely hope this has never and will never happen to any of our Chums but apparently it is occurring in record numbers to all sorts of people from all walks of life. More and more people are experiencing having their FaceBook and Instagram accounts “hacked”. That simply means someone with more experience and knowledge of IT and how it works can use their knowledge for nefarious purposes and assume your identity in the hopes of luring one or more of your friends into their net.

This happened to me about a week ago. I received a private message on Instagram from someone I know who is a very talented and creative person who explained she was hoping to become a social media influencer. (You can see the text exchange here below). Because I know her many talents, it never occurred to me that this message was not from her.

Influencers make money from companies who pay them to “influence” others regarding products and services they purchase. The amount they are paid is based on the number of followers and likes they get on the posts on their sites.

Obviously, the message I got on Instagram messages was NOT from the woman I know but rather from a hacker. I was sent a link from the hacker posing as my friend as to where I could “vote” for her. When I opened the text that supposedly held the link and clicked on the link I actually was giving the hacker access to my Instagram account. There was no place to vote, just another site I didn’t recognize so I just closed it out. The hacker happened to be Russian. I know that is true only because a bit later when I checked my email, I had an email from Instagram. When I opened the email to see what it was regarding, it was in Russian so needless to say I wasn’t able to read it or know what it was regarding. Later I was able to copy and paste the Russian message into a translation app and discovered that Instagram was asking if I had changed the email address on my account. They said if I had changed it, I didn’t need to do anything. If I hadn’t changed it I could click on a link to notify them that the change wasn’t initiated by me. Of course by the time I had translated this message, my email had been changed and my account highjacked. The hacker changed my email and my username slightly, just enough so that I couldn’t use it to get into my account and recover it. They kept my photo so anyone who saw their posts would assume they were put there by me. This hacker was allegedly selling bitcoin and trying to get my followers or friends to click on links to check out the bitcoin I had supposedly bought and made money on.

Why? you may be asking yourself. Could they actually make money selling some bitcoin to a possible one or two people who MIGHT check out their bitcoin account? The answer is NO.

BUT, what they can do is use that inquiry to get to people’s financial info and possibly clean out their bank accounts! As a result, I felt compelled to spend nearly every waking hour for the better part of more than 4 days trying to correct the situation and regain control of my account. If it hadn’t been for the fact that other people could get hurt, I could have just written it off and opened a new account or just gotten off Instagram altogether. I had help from the friend of a friend who had been through this same thing and had hired an IT person to work with her to get her identity and account back. She walked me through the steps and helped me try various ways to “confuse” the system so as to get in and reclaim my identity.

If you are asking why I didn’t just contact Instagram and request their help, I DID!!! Repeatedly. And I emailed and messaged FaceBook which is the parent company of Instagram. I eventually found a phone line to their Help Center where I called but didn’t ever speak to a real person. Instead I heard a message notifying me that if I was calling to get help with a problem with my account, they didn’t offer that help over the phone. The message informed me that I should go to an information page and try the generic options they offered there. That was NO HELP at all!!! Why have a Help Line phone number if you don’t offer help?!!!

If by now you are wondering why I am telling you this tale when our mission here at Two Chums is to spread love, joy and abundant living, it is to inform and hopefully protect you from experiencing this kind of violation.

If you receive a message asking you to click on a link for any reason, DON”T DO IT!!!! Privately contact the person whose name the message is coming from and confirm that the message is actually from him or her and not from a hacker. You can save yourself hours and days of headache and heartache. Avoiding this kind of problem can stop a lot of frustration and trouble. Then you can fully focus your energies on love, joy and hopefully a whole lot of abundant living 🙂