my email account got hacked.
wednesday night i turned off my computer like normal, crawled under my comfy covers and fell asleep. i was blissfully unaware of the little nightmare i'd discover in the morning. i woke up to find out that we had no internet access-something about malware or a virus being sent from my computer-so our internet provider had blocked our account?! oh no. oh nonononono. what made this situation even more stressful, was the fact that we were driving up to Seattle that morning for a baseball game. there was no way i was going to leave our computer sitting there with some potential threat for two days! luckily, i have a computer savvy dad, who i immediately called. he walked me through some things, i called our internet provider, changed all my passwords, and shut down my email account.
we were a little late heading out, but i felt a lot better about leaving knowing i did all i could do. yes i am a control freak sometimes...okay, actually all the time when it comes to the computer and my images. anyways, i was enjoying the game until i checked my phone around the 6th inning...and realized that the account i shut down had photo albums linked to blogs i had previously designed for. (i should have known this, and you can see me virtually do a palm-to-forehead slap....now) you might have seen some of these blogs that were down-they had big ugly grey triangles everywhere an image was supposed to be? yeah. cue freakout #2. haha (i laugh now, but it was far from funny at the time!). i began texting and facebook messaging everyone who i designed for to give them an apology and a heads up on the situation.
and oh my heck. i have designed for the best people ever, because all of them were so understanding and nice about the whole situation. i know i would have been dying if i was in their position! so THANK YOU again for being so nice and patient with me while i sorted all the mess out. you know who you are. and the mess did get sorted out. thank. freaking. goodness.
so with that drama aside, i was able to learn two very important lessons from this whole experience.
#1 - host your own images. do not host all the images for the 15 people who you designed for under the same account. or any account. give them their image files to host themselves. this might seem like a "pain" or adds another step when working with someone and doing the installation process, but this way, when your account crashes, 15 other things don't crash too :) ...aka: nightmare averted.
#2 - don't use the same password for all 20 accounts you have (slight exaggeration...but you get it).
happy monday people! yay for new weeks, getting things done, and being productive!
*has your email every been hacked?
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