by Naoko Kensaku

Created on: August 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I was hacked not once, but thrice.

Two of them happened to the same account. The third attack was stopped very quickly by Ebay, who noticed odd activities shortly after it happened. I received an email from them, and upon going to the website to check it out, I immediately notified Ebay to confirm the attack. As I did not have a credit card, the attacks did not go further.

What happened to my other account was more worrisome, and I blame only myself for being hacked.

The first time I was hacked, I was only 14, and it was my first time having an email address. It could have been a prank, or someone could have gained access to my account, left running on an unguraded computer. The person sent me emails saying that he now had access to my account and basically stalked me for a little while. I suspected that it was one of my high school friends, but I could never prove it.

It was, I think, just a juvenile prank.

What happened a few years later was just carelessness on my part. The password I used for my account was a dictionary word, and I had not changed it in many years. One day I found that I could not access my account any more, and I was very sure that I had not changed the password. Attempts made throughout the day and following weeks to reset my password just left me in despair, for most of the details I had used for the account was partially false as I did not want anyone to be able to track me down to my physical location.

In the end, even though it had been requested from the Yahoo! Team, I gave up on my account. They were requesting me to fax over the details I had used to sign up previously, and most were intimate details I did not feel comfortable giving over the fax. I let my ID go, even though it hurt, beacuse it was the first ID I had made, and it had chronicled how long I had been on the Internet.

I've learnt my lesson since then. Whenever I can, I use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols for my accounts, and no more do I keep the same passwords for my accounts. Now the more important the account, the more complex my password is. I also practise good surfing habits and am careful to visit only certain sites and to clear my cache often. I also keep a close eye on what programs dial out of my computer, nuking everything that I don't want connecting to the Internet.

I use a few different anti-virus softwares, firewalls, and whenever I can, I set my computer to scan for viruses at a certain time so they make sure they don't miss anything. Every little but helps.

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