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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

When technology becomes bane

I felt so devastated last night upon learning that a hacker accessed my Facebook (FB) and Yahoo accounts to scam my friends. The scammer chatted with my FB friends showing herself on the webcam with my baby. How could he/she do that? Maybe by stealing some photos from my Facebook or elsewhere? I don't even update it. He/she is such a skillful deceiver! He/She asked for e-load of small amount at first promising that she would send the payment in 2 days. When my friends said they could not send any e-load, she instead proposed that if they wanted to make money, she could give as much as 50% profit to their money if they could send the amount of PhP50,000 Globe and Smart e-load right away. So that amount would become PhP75,000. in just a matter of 2 days and that 75k would be sent to my friends through Western Union knowing that I'm abroad.
One of my friends who really trusts me completely believing that it was me she chatted with sent the asked amount. Yesterday, as she could no longer reach me through the given international roaming number and my FB and her link with me through Yahoo was also placed in the Ignore List, sent a comment to my blogsite. That's the time that she confirmed that it wasn't me. She now feels so stressed and so do I.
One thing I discovered about my FB account is that, anyone can change its password. It's not secured. I wanted to deactivate it but I couldn't. A prompt said, "You can log in using your old email address and password to reactivate it". But even if it's secured, for evil hackers, they can still access anything they want.
This is when technology becomes more of a bane than boon. So, beware of any identity thieves lurking in the dark to hunt their next preys! Be wary of giving out any personal information. Verify a million times before granting anything valuable. Oh, I'm now becoming paranoid to whom I interact with via cyberspace!
P.S. Please spread this information around to save the next modus operandi victims.

7 comments:

kathy said...

OMG! Miss A! I'm so sorry to hear this! I am like in awe right now, that something like this happend to you. You know sometimes we say, it's not gonna happen to me, but we are all prone to this scam. I hope ur friend will be able to reverse the money transfer..

I am lost for words. That's why my hubby is not in favor with facebook or myspace because like he said, you never know what those crazy people in that site would do.

This is a lesson for everybody...

Unknown said...

I am so sorry to hear that you and your friend were victims to this horrible violation and robbery.

It is so unfortunate that thieves and abusers will take advantage of innocent people in any way they can.
We most definitely have to be aware of these monsters and it so does make our lives feel very unsafe.

My worry is will this ever get better ?
Will people just continue to violate and abuse because they can?

This is a very sad thing!

nice A said...

Yes, kathy, it may happen to anyone so let's all be careful. let's also continue to spread the precautions around.
My friend said, she paid a big amount for tuition fee in order to learn her lesson the hard way. And she paid that for all of us to learn as well ):

nice A said...

Thanks, Ms. D. You said it very well. These monsters do make our lives feel so unsafe that we become mistrustful even to the innocent ones.

Anonymous said...

Dropping by Miss A! Salamat sa bisita ha... Hope you will have a wonderful weekend with your entire family...

Goldie Jell said...

Hi! - I'm so sorry to hear that someone hacked into your facebook account and to hear your friend was robbed also. There's some awful people out there. I guess we must all be very careful when on the internet. It's terrible to think we have to be so careful isn't it?

Thank you for your very nice comments about my Cinderella story re-told by me. You're very kind!

nice A said...

Thanks for visiting here, Goldie! Yes, we all need to be very careful.

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