I feel an idiot. Last night I was well and truly hooked by local phishermen.... or in this case someone pretending to be someone I knew.
My identity was briefly stolen - my personna robbed - someone took my place. Some unknown piece of shit stole my name and passed themself off as me. I feel abnormally angry.
Phishing and chips
I'm perhaps one of the lucky ones. No money was involved this time - at least none I'm aware of. My credit cards are intact, my bank balance remains healthy - but my identity was still taken. I am violated.
The cause.... I opened a DM (direct message) on Twitter from a trusted follower, and it advised me to follow a link that I 'just had to see'. That's what ultimately let me down - I was too damn nosey - I had to find out what was going on - so I suppose it was my own fault. That's what these vile shits understand - people's weaknesses. They're expert psychologists.
Identity theft
When I clicked the link I received a message telling me that Twitter was over capacity. Now as all Twitter users will know, this a common enough happening - except this time it also flashed up that I needed to re-enter my Twitter name and password. It wasn't quite the same format as usual but close enough not to ring any warning bells - I entered my password and bingo....
Immediately, some, if not all, of my followers received strange DM's that I can only hope were legal. I pray no one had anything pornographic.
I was lucky enough to have people warn me fairly soon afterwards that something odd was taking place. I followed advice and changed my password - which hopefully put a stop to it - but how much damage was done - to my reputation if nothing else? That's what identity theft does, it robs you of confidence, it makes you question what else in your life has been affected - or damaged.
Reputations take forever to build and can be destroyed in seconds - I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that any collateral is minimal. I hope my friends remain just that - friends. I hope they realise it wasn't me sending out the spam.
So take heed of my circumstance and be warned. Be careful how and when you let your password out - it's frighteningly easy to get trapped. It all seemed so logical, so normal that I was fooled. There are some evil bastards out there..... It could have been much worse than this.
- Next post on Tell Me a Story.
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