The good news/update on the hacker situation is that my sister was able to regain access to her e-mail account. Through a number of google searches on compromised g-mail accounts, I read a blog story that mentioned that if you knew your exact account creation date as well as 6 frequently e-mailed addresses, that g-mail could get you back into your account. My sister had filled out this form with an estimated account creation date, and never heard anything. I told her to fill it out again using the exact account creation date that I was able to pull up in my g-mail account (since I had invited her to g-mail) and it worked!!!
The sad news is that all of her contacts have been deleted, but it looks like the majority of her sent messages are still intact, so she should be able to put together a new address book without much trouble.
But even though she has her account back, she now has to decide whether or not she wants to consider using it. You see, she had given up hope of ever getting it back, so she created a new e-mail address. Now she has two, which is fine for some people (for example, I manage at least 5 personal e-mail accounts that I use for various purposes), she's not really the kind of person that needs that many. While all of her friends and family know her old address, I don't know if I would be able to shake the feeling that a complete stranger had been rummaging through my personal life. There's this weird feeling of being violated that might be hard to overcome, and a fear that it could happen again at any time.
Regardless of what she decides, I learned a lot about google and g-mail security from this process, and I want to share that information with all of you who might also have g-mail accounts.
So, I present to you my 5 recommendations for operating a safer, more secure G-mail account:
1. If you haven't done so already, change your passwords. Make them hard to guess, and make them different for each account you have.
2. Check your "filters" setting. There is a G-mail virus that creates a filter in your settings that forwards messages to a hacker containing certain words (such as password.) If you ever forgot your password and needed a reminder, the hacker would receive the new temporary password and you would never receive it - thus giving the hacker full access to your account. To make sure that you don't have any filters, so to "Settings," then "filters" and make sure that there aren't any filters there. Check this regularly.
3. Check your "Forwarding" settings. In my sister's case, we noticed that she wasn't receiving any of the e-mails that I sending to her as a test. She was online, and I was able to g-chat with her, but she wasn't receiving messages. She had checked her filters and those were clear, so I told her to check her forwarding setting. Lo and behold there was a fowarding setting on her account that basically instructed the system to forward all new e-mails to the hackers address (YES! She now has the hackers e-mail address!) and then delete them from g-mail, effectively her from ever knowing that a message was sent. Once she removed the forwarding setting, she started receiving messages again. Check this regularly.
4. Use G-mail's secure server. G-mail offers the option to use a secure https:// server, but you have to make this a setting if you want to use it all the time. Basically, this encrypts data that you send so that it's not as easy to hack, especially when you're using a non-secured wirless connection. To change this, again go to "setting" and select "Always use https." Although this will slow down your g-mail slightly, the extra security is probably worth it.
5. Learn your "account created" date. If your g-mail account is compromised and your secondary e-mail and cell phone settings have been changed by the hacker, all hope may not be lost if you know your account created date. Basically, this is the exact date that your g-mail account was created. If you know this date when you fill out the "my account is compromised" form, they will reset your password and send it to another account that you specify, effectively taking away control from the hacker. The key is that the date you list must be EXACTLY the same as your account creation date, otherwise, they won't be able to verify that it's really you. This is what you need to do:
- Talk to the person that invited you to G-mail
- Have them search their e-mail for messages sent "From" the "Gmail Team." This will bring up all of the g-mail invitations that people have accepted.
- Have them tell you the exact date that they received the "YOUR NAME has accepted your invitation to Gmail" message. This is your account creation date.
- Now, store this information in a safe place (NOT in your g-mail account, where a hacker could find it.)
While I know that anyone can be a victim of fraud and identity theft, I hope that these tips help to prevent it from happening to you! And if you know of any additional tips, please let me know and I'll add them to this list!
HACKED!
Earlier today we found out that my sister's g-mail account had been hacked into. A bunch of us received an e-mail that went something like this:
"Hello, I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's because of the situation of things right now, I'm stuck in London with family right now, i came down here on vacation , i was robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone was stolen at GUN POINT, it's such a crazy experience for me, i need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is i still have my passport but don't have enough money to get my flight ticket back home and l need to clear the hotel bills here , please i need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as I'm back home, i promise.Get back to me ASAP let me know what to do next."
Creepy, right?
Not thinking, I immediately replied saying, "You better change your password because it seems like you're e-mail was hacked into." Little did I know that the hacker had already changed her password and my sister no longer had access to her e-mail at all. I got a phone call from her shortly thereafter, asking what she should do.
I didn't really have any good suggestions. Once your e-mail has been taken over, it's hard to get it back. The hacker had changed the "secondary" e-mail address and the cell phone number that google uses in the even that you forget your password. It's way to easy to make that change - you just go into a setting and change it. Anyone could do it. So it's a no-brainer that the hacker had already done that.
But what was even creepier that this particular hacker was very agressively trying to trick people and he/she (for some reason I think it's a he) spent a lot of time yesterday sending individualized e-mails to people who happened to respond to the e-mail or who were on g-chat. Here is the response that I received:
"It's me.. this is for real, I'm doing everything i can to work my way out of here peacefully.. i have checked with the consulate but there is nothing really working out, most important is i don't have enough money on please, please i need you to loan me some, i can pay you back in couple of days."
I knew that this was a hoax because I had just spoken to my sister on her home phone the evening before, and knew without a doubt that she wasn't in London. But others weren't so sure, especially since my sister and her husband travel a LOT (at least in my book they do.) So it wasn't totally crazy to think that something like that had really happened. My brother-in-law (BIL) - who had just returned to the country from Bolivia - was contacted via a g-chat session that the hacker initiated with him. The hacker was casual enough that it took BIL a few minutes to realize that there was definitely something shady going on. At which point he contacted me.
A few hours later we found out that her Facebook account had been taken over as well. The hacker was trying to initiate chats with Facebook contacts, trying to convince people that "my sister" had had her cell phone stolen and then Facebook was the only way she could get in touch with anyone. This hacker chatted with multiple people and had convinced my cousin enough that she actually called her mom to see if she knew anything because she was so concerned.
Multiple other people had received responses from the hacker as well. It seems like later on in the day, he became more aggressive, outrightly asking for $1500 to be wired through Western Union (in the e-mails that I received, money wasn't initially asked for - he was trying to garner up some sympathy first.) I decided to see if I could learn anything from this hacker and responded (near the end of the day) to the second e-mail that I had received - "What are you doing in London? I didn't know you were going anywhere." But that point, he must have known that I wasn't going to be tricked - I never received a response.
So, this is my warning to everyone to CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS, NOW! Make sure that it's not an obvious guess - avoid your birthday, address, pet's name, children's names.. anything that could easily be guessed and that is somewhat public information. Use variations of capital and lowercase letters, use numbers, and random characters that don't have anything to do with a word. Just make it hard..
I got my g-mail account back in mid-2004. I have YEARS of e-mails, documents, photographs and memories in that account. I also use Google Reader and would lose all of my blog links. My Picasa albums would be gone. And my Blogger account? Gone as well.... It's easy to not realize how much I rely on google and their products each and every day - most mornings I check my e-mail on my phone right after I get out of the shower... If it was gone, I would be devastated, and would probably lose most of the contacts in my life. All of those personal conversations - I would feel completely violated and sick with disgust, especially if I hadn't done everything that I could.
So, in addition to changing your password to something hard, I have one final tip. Google offers a secure site that you can use that will encrypt your data before sending/submitting if you're using a public network or non-secured wireless connection. Simply go to https://mail.google.com (notice the S in https?? That's the secure server) instead of your regular g-mail login location and you should be able to connect via their secure server.
Google is NOT helpful once your account has been compromised. From what I can tell, they offer no assistance at all, unless your secondary e-mail address or cell phone number are still intact and they can send a new password there. But if your hacker is smarter than a second grader, they'll probably know to change this. Which means that your account is gone. Forever.....
Don't let this happen to you.
The Effect of My Butterfly
We have all heard about the "butterfly effect" - that a butterfly in the US flaps it's wings and sets into motion a tsunami that wipes out half of Thailand. Or something along those lines... Anyway, we all have our own little butterfly moments, each and every day, but it's not until the tsunami hits that we can really look back to see what set the events that led up to this moment into motion. In fact, in many cases, it's not at all possible to even know that the butterfly ever flapped it's wings. But sometimes, we are fortunate enough to have those moments, and I feel like I had one recently.
I'm not sure if I can trace it back as far as to the original butterfly flap, but I do know that something motivated me to take a Zumba class over the summer, and then again in the fall. A few weeks into the fall class, I found myself humming and attempting to sing Zumba songs that are in Spanish. I don't know Spanish, so I would just make up words, but that frustrated me. Around that time I read a book review in my Budget Travel magazine for "Dreaming in Hindi," a book about linguistics and second-language acquisition told through the lens of a woman who moved to India for a year in early September 2001 to participate in a Hindi immersion program. The concepts discussed in that book were fascinating to me, and I was once again inspired to learn Spanish. After all, we were planning a vacation for next summer so why not go to Mexico and put some of that Spanish into use (I had taken a spanish class at Carnegie Mellon last year but after that semester, I didn't keep up with it and lost basically everything I had learned.) So, now I am the proud owner of Drive Time Spanish discs, that supposedly teach you Spanish while you're in the car. We'll see how that goes...
Anyway, this was a long way of saying that if I hadn't taken that one Zumba class in the summer, my life might be on a very different track right now. Every decision that we make - every flap of the butterfly's wings - whether conscious or unconscious, sets into motion a series of events that culminates in an event, even if we're not able to see it as an even that we have been leading up to, and even if we are not able to consciously recognize the steps that brought us here.
I'm not sure if I can trace it back as far as to the original butterfly flap, but I do know that something motivated me to take a Zumba class over the summer, and then again in the fall. A few weeks into the fall class, I found myself humming and attempting to sing Zumba songs that are in Spanish. I don't know Spanish, so I would just make up words, but that frustrated me. Around that time I read a book review in my Budget Travel magazine for "Dreaming in Hindi," a book about linguistics and second-language acquisition told through the lens of a woman who moved to India for a year in early September 2001 to participate in a Hindi immersion program. The concepts discussed in that book were fascinating to me, and I was once again inspired to learn Spanish. After all, we were planning a vacation for next summer so why not go to Mexico and put some of that Spanish into use (I had taken a spanish class at Carnegie Mellon last year but after that semester, I didn't keep up with it and lost basically everything I had learned.) So, now I am the proud owner of Drive Time Spanish discs, that supposedly teach you Spanish while you're in the car. We'll see how that goes...
Anyway, this was a long way of saying that if I hadn't taken that one Zumba class in the summer, my life might be on a very different track right now. Every decision that we make - every flap of the butterfly's wings - whether conscious or unconscious, sets into motion a series of events that culminates in an event, even if we're not able to see it as an even that we have been leading up to, and even if we are not able to consciously recognize the steps that brought us here.
On my own
As I write this, Dave is on the road to Baltimore, in preparation for attending a funeral tomorrow morning. For various reasons - including a treadmill repair-man appointment, shopping plans with my mother, and no caretaker for the dog - I am staying home. As is always the case with funerals, there was almost no notice and so now I suddenly find myself with a Friday night at home, by myself. And I'm surprisingly ok with that.
Our lives have fallen into a relatively peaceful and yet sometimes dull routine. We work, we come home, I cook, he washes dishes, I read, he goes on his computer and then at 8 p.m. we convene for a 1 hour work-out session before preparing for bed. But tonight, I don't have to cook if I don't want to do, so I'm contemplating a big old spinach salad with croutons and nothing more. One dish and one fork to wash. Done and done. Then I might go on the treadmill. Or I might not. I may make a mojito and veg out and catch up on the 5 DVR'd episodes of SYTYCD (So You Think You Can Dance, for those not in the "know").
The point is, I can do whatever I want. The routine is by the wayside. And although I will miss Dave, I'm probably going to see him tomorrow night, so it's not like I'm going to wallow in my sadness. Instead I'm going to enjoy the peace and quiet and spend my evening with me, myself and this guy:
Our lives have fallen into a relatively peaceful and yet sometimes dull routine. We work, we come home, I cook, he washes dishes, I read, he goes on his computer and then at 8 p.m. we convene for a 1 hour work-out session before preparing for bed. But tonight, I don't have to cook if I don't want to do, so I'm contemplating a big old spinach salad with croutons and nothing more. One dish and one fork to wash. Done and done. Then I might go on the treadmill. Or I might not. I may make a mojito and veg out and catch up on the 5 DVR'd episodes of SYTYCD (So You Think You Can Dance, for those not in the "know").
The point is, I can do whatever I want. The routine is by the wayside. And although I will miss Dave, I'm probably going to see him tomorrow night, so it's not like I'm going to wallow in my sadness. Instead I'm going to enjoy the peace and quiet and spend my evening with me, myself and this guy:
The other "man" in my life.
Lights!!!
On Sunday we also put up on Christmas lights. Know that this happened at my insistence, since if it was up to Dave we wouldn't have any lights at all. But when I said that I would just do it myself, he quickly jumped in, since things that I do myself (with the exception of installing room-darkening blinds nearly two years ago) usually go poorly.
Putting up the lights became an adventure in itself since it included my first visit to the roof of our house. While I would not consider myself to "be afraid of heights," I am also smart enough to not feel comfortable on a rickety wooden ladder that requires me to have to stand on the very top step (marked "DO NOT STAND ON THIS STEP!") and THEN to have to literally hoist myself using mostly sheer momentum. Dave - who might be part billy-goat when it comes to navigating dangerous cliffs and heights - hopped up with confidence and was probably more afraid of my seemingly impending death than I was.
That being said, I have no pictures of my roof experience - I was definitely not climbing back down just to get a camera.
So, after a few disappointments (i.e. the first string of lights that worked when we tested them on the ground suddenly failed once on the roof) the lights were up, and we sad to see that the string didn't reach along the stretch of the house. Oh well, we decided that people would just think that we only wanted to light the actual "house" part of the house (instead of including the porch as well.)
And finally, a shot of the house from across the street.
Oddly enough, it doesn't look that impressive in this picture. But trust me - when you're driving down our dark and twisty tree-line road, our house seems like a beacon of bright light coming out of the fog!!! As we are literally the only house with lights of any kind and one of the only houses that is directly on the road, we stand out like a light-house.
And while it was quite a bit of work, I love it.
Putting up the lights became an adventure in itself since it included my first visit to the roof of our house. While I would not consider myself to "be afraid of heights," I am also smart enough to not feel comfortable on a rickety wooden ladder that requires me to have to stand on the very top step (marked "DO NOT STAND ON THIS STEP!") and THEN to have to literally hoist myself using mostly sheer momentum. Dave - who might be part billy-goat when it comes to navigating dangerous cliffs and heights - hopped up with confidence and was probably more afraid of my seemingly impending death than I was.
That being said, I have no pictures of my roof experience - I was definitely not climbing back down just to get a camera.
So, after a few disappointments (i.e. the first string of lights that worked when we tested them on the ground suddenly failed once on the roof) the lights were up, and we sad to see that the string didn't reach along the stretch of the house. Oh well, we decided that people would just think that we only wanted to light the actual "house" part of the house (instead of including the porch as well.)
Sadly these pictures aren't very good
The pine tree with lights to the right of the house was the original object of our Christmas light affection. It was so hard to get those lights in that tree that we just leave them in year-round now. Yep, we're those people. Each year we run the extension cord and cross our fingers that they'll light. So far, so good. In fact, those lights have held up better than the ones we've stored in our garage, which makes me think that maybe we should just leave ALL of our lights outside year round...
The ever-lit pine tree
And finally, a shot of the house from across the street.
Oddly enough, it doesn't look that impressive in this picture. But trust me - when you're driving down our dark and twisty tree-line road, our house seems like a beacon of bright light coming out of the fog!!! As we are literally the only house with lights of any kind and one of the only houses that is directly on the road, we stand out like a light-house.
And while it was quite a bit of work, I love it.
Ok, Ladies (and guys!). Help me out!
So, I'm going to a wedding next wedding. It's Dave's brother's wedding, where Dave is a co-best man. I bought a dress for this event (ordered it online, non-returnable, will never do it again...) and it was too big. So I paid more money to have it taken in and it's nearly too tight now (I'm hoping a week of running will fix that.)
Anyway, here is dress #1.
This was taken right after dinner (bad idea for an already tight dress), but can you see how it's sort of pulling above and below the bow? It definitely feels tight there, although it's definitely manageable in an I'm-a-woman-and-will-always-sacrifice-comfort-for-fashion kind of way.
Most likely, I will wear the dress above. Partly because I purchased it for this event, partly because I'm not sure where I'll ever wear it again anywhere else, and partly because the bridesmaids are wearing black and the bride did mention over the summer that she hoped not everyone would wear black. I'm 99% sure she wouldn't care at all, but I would hate to create any extra stress.
Which brings me to dress #2, which is black. (Well, sort of....)
Now, I really love this dress. It's not too tight but it IS form fitting. It feels sexy and fun and I just feel good when I'm wearing it. Which is probably why I should not wear it to the wedding, right? I mean, after all, I will definitely find other occasions to wear this dress. For example, it would be a great New Year's Party dress! (We currently don't have any NYE's plans, hint, hint.) Or, I could wear it to one of the other many weddings that we'll be going to the spring/summer where we would just be regular old guests and it wouldn't matter it the bridesmaids were wearing black or not.
Dave - being a typical man - would not give an opinion. I guess it's probably safer that way.
Soooo... here's where you come in. Do you think I should just wear the brown dress? Or is the black and white clearly much better?
And if I do wear the first dress, what color shoes should I wear?? Black? Or Brown? The dress has both colors in it. The first picture shows the brown shoes. Here's a picture of that first dress with the black shoes.
What do you think? Does one color look better than the other? Neither are clear winners to me, but after spending so much on the dress, I'm not willing to buy new shoes, so your opinion would be greatly appreciated!!!
Anyway, here is dress #1.
This was taken right after dinner (bad idea for an already tight dress), but can you see how it's sort of pulling above and below the bow? It definitely feels tight there, although it's definitely manageable in an I'm-a-woman-and-will-always-sacrifice-comfort-for-fashion kind of way.
Most likely, I will wear the dress above. Partly because I purchased it for this event, partly because I'm not sure where I'll ever wear it again anywhere else, and partly because the bridesmaids are wearing black and the bride did mention over the summer that she hoped not everyone would wear black. I'm 99% sure she wouldn't care at all, but I would hate to create any extra stress.
Which brings me to dress #2, which is black. (Well, sort of....)
Dress #2 with a shrug
And without
Now, I really love this dress. It's not too tight but it IS form fitting. It feels sexy and fun and I just feel good when I'm wearing it. Which is probably why I should not wear it to the wedding, right? I mean, after all, I will definitely find other occasions to wear this dress. For example, it would be a great New Year's Party dress! (We currently don't have any NYE's plans, hint, hint.) Or, I could wear it to one of the other many weddings that we'll be going to the spring/summer where we would just be regular old guests and it wouldn't matter it the bridesmaids were wearing black or not.
Dave - being a typical man - would not give an opinion. I guess it's probably safer that way.
Soooo... here's where you come in. Do you think I should just wear the brown dress? Or is the black and white clearly much better?
And if I do wear the first dress, what color shoes should I wear?? Black? Or Brown? The dress has both colors in it. The first picture shows the brown shoes. Here's a picture of that first dress with the black shoes.
What do you think? Does one color look better than the other? Neither are clear winners to me, but after spending so much on the dress, I'm not willing to buy new shoes, so your opinion would be greatly appreciated!!!
The lure of eating out
Dave and I LOVE going out to eat. We spend WAAAAY to much money at restaurants, especially lately. We're trying to cut back, and it's oh-so-hard, but it's also good for a couple of reasons as well.
1. Cost - As mentioned above, we spend way too much money eating out. We're talking hundreds of dollars a month. Seriously. It's gotten out of control.
2. Health - When we eat out, we generally have a beer (or two), and we obviously are not counting our calories when we order chips and salsa in addition to our meals. Even when you order something that seems reasonably healthy, if it's made in a restaurant it's probably not as healthy as you'd like to think.
Those are two pretty convincing reasons right there. So why is going out to eat so damn attractive!?!?
Well...
1. No cooking - As the household chef, on nights that I'm tired or just don't feel like cooking, going out is the easy solution. During particularly rough weeks, we might go out two or three times.
2. No dishes - No cooking equals no clean-up, and no one likes to clean up, right!?!?
3. Tastier food - As much as I would like to convince myself that my food is as tasty as a restaurant's, I would be wrong. Nearly everything that I eat in a restaurant seems to taste better than the stuff I make. From fried chicken to burritos to soft pretzels. Everything tastes better when someone else makes it.
4. Human Interaction - Dave and I often feel very isolated from human interaction. We no longer really have neighbors, and - except for when we're at work - we don't encounter any other human beings unless we go out. Sometimes we just want to be around other people, even if we don't know them or have any intention of talking with them. Just being in a room that's buzzing with the sound of other human beings is oftentimes very enjoyable to us. Does this mean that we've lived in the "country" too long?
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that for various reason - which I'll discuss in a future post - we are cutting back financially in many areas of our lives. One of the most obvious ways to cut back is to stop going out to eat. However, I don't think we can stop altogether, so we're planning on creating a budget - say, perhaps $100 per month for eating out - and we're going to try to stick to it. It's only been a week now, but I'm already craving a Mad Mex burrito....
One of our all-time favorite places to eat. (Source)
1. Cost - As mentioned above, we spend way too much money eating out. We're talking hundreds of dollars a month. Seriously. It's gotten out of control.
2. Health - When we eat out, we generally have a beer (or two), and we obviously are not counting our calories when we order chips and salsa in addition to our meals. Even when you order something that seems reasonably healthy, if it's made in a restaurant it's probably not as healthy as you'd like to think.
Those are two pretty convincing reasons right there. So why is going out to eat so damn attractive!?!?
Well...
1. No cooking - As the household chef, on nights that I'm tired or just don't feel like cooking, going out is the easy solution. During particularly rough weeks, we might go out two or three times.
2. No dishes - No cooking equals no clean-up, and no one likes to clean up, right!?!?
3. Tastier food - As much as I would like to convince myself that my food is as tasty as a restaurant's, I would be wrong. Nearly everything that I eat in a restaurant seems to taste better than the stuff I make. From fried chicken to burritos to soft pretzels. Everything tastes better when someone else makes it.
4. Human Interaction - Dave and I often feel very isolated from human interaction. We no longer really have neighbors, and - except for when we're at work - we don't encounter any other human beings unless we go out. Sometimes we just want to be around other people, even if we don't know them or have any intention of talking with them. Just being in a room that's buzzing with the sound of other human beings is oftentimes very enjoyable to us. Does this mean that we've lived in the "country" too long?
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that for various reason - which I'll discuss in a future post - we are cutting back financially in many areas of our lives. One of the most obvious ways to cut back is to stop going out to eat. However, I don't think we can stop altogether, so we're planning on creating a budget - say, perhaps $100 per month for eating out - and we're going to try to stick to it. It's only been a week now, but I'm already craving a Mad Mex burrito....
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