I checked my e-mail the other night to find a message from Amazon confirming that my account had been updated to an unknown e-mail address. WTF, hacked for the holidays! I immediately logged on my Amazon account; cancelled two orders for expensive electronic equipment; restored my correct e-mail address; changed my password to a nonsensical sixteen string of numbers, letters and characters; and deleted my saved credit card that enabled one click Amazon Prime shopping; yeah, I’m a lazy slug. Then, I checked my credit card on-line, and there were no fraudulent charges. I also checked my USAA bank and investment account balances on the landline telephone out of fear that I had a keyboard hack.
I called my older son, who is a software engineer in Seattle, and he remotely took control of my PC to check it out. He had installed AVG Free Antivirus on a previous visit. He updated it, and scheduled a weekly scan. Then he ran Spybot Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes. Finally, he had a reverse role father son talk. This is amusing, because I started out as a programmer many years ago, but got far away from coding with promotions and a job switch to corporate during a tech downturn. I had upgraded to Windows 10 several weeks ago, but hadn’t updated my antivirus software. My son started at Microsoft, and has a college friend in the Windows group, who swears that 10 is the cleanest release in their history, since the company is now run by a software guy. My son works on Amazon’s tech side, but he is certain that the retail site will not have a Target like breach. Bezos is brilliant and brutal. There would be blood running in the streets of Seattle, if that ever happened. I was guilty of using a six letter name of a French town with various two digit suffixes for all my passwords from the library to my bank, very simple, but too easily hacked. I was lazy and at fault. I’ve updated my passwords; will run the software to clean the PC; continue to delete all unknown e-mails;; and will only shop online from my secure PC in the future. Maybe some of you can benefit from my f*ckup and avoid being hacked.
Happy Holidays!
I called my older son, who is a software engineer in Seattle, and he remotely took control of my PC to check it out. He had installed AVG Free Antivirus on a previous visit. He updated it, and scheduled a weekly scan. Then he ran Spybot Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes. Finally, he had a reverse role father son talk. This is amusing, because I started out as a programmer many years ago, but got far away from coding with promotions and a job switch to corporate during a tech downturn. I had upgraded to Windows 10 several weeks ago, but hadn’t updated my antivirus software. My son started at Microsoft, and has a college friend in the Windows group, who swears that 10 is the cleanest release in their history, since the company is now run by a software guy. My son works on Amazon’s tech side, but he is certain that the retail site will not have a Target like breach. Bezos is brilliant and brutal. There would be blood running in the streets of Seattle, if that ever happened. I was guilty of using a six letter name of a French town with various two digit suffixes for all my passwords from the library to my bank, very simple, but too easily hacked. I was lazy and at fault. I’ve updated my passwords; will run the software to clean the PC; continue to delete all unknown e-mails;; and will only shop online from my secure PC in the future. Maybe some of you can benefit from my f*ckup and avoid being hacked.
Happy Holidays!
