A few days ago, I had my Twitter account hacked. I could have kicked myself, because after the fact I realized that I was a willing participant to the hacking. After living in a world of internet spam, with all of the suspicious emails, tweets and blog comments I see all the time, I finally fell for one. Ouch. A blow to the pride for sure, but it taught me a thing or two about myself. About trust and belief.
So, how did this happen? First, I got a direct message from someone I know. I don’t follow a huge number of people on twitter, and while some of them are big names who don’t know me from the next person, many of them are people I’ve interacted with online or in person. This message came from someone I know, have met in person and exchanged emails with. A friend. So the first step in my downfall was receiving the message from someone I trust. It gave it a credibility it otherwise wouldn’t.
The second, and more insidious piece, is how I believed the message. I’ve never fallen for wiring money to Africa, or making thousands of dollars working from home, or the latest pharmaceutical scam. But this message preyed upon my vulnerability, saying, “You seen what this person is saying about you? {Link} terrible things.” I believed it. I clicked the link, “logged in” to twitter and willingly gave up my password. Why? Because I’ve always had this underlying fear that sometime, somewhere, someone was going to say terrible things about me on the Internet. It has to just be a matter of time, when you put yourself out there publicly like this, right? I realize now this wasn’t just a fear they preyed upon, I carried it around so long it became a belief. I have been sure that it would happen. Steeling myself against the day when it would come. So in my head I said, “Yep, it’s finally happened.” And I clicked the link.
I have to admit the smarts of these hackers, preying on our trust and belief like this. I have to admit chagrin, that I’m not as savvy against hackers as I thought. The hackers only took advantage so far. My own belief helped them the rest of the way.
I apologize if you got the same twitter message from me this week, I hope you saw it for what it was and didn’t click the link. I hate to think that I might have lost the trust of others in this way. But I did learn one important lesson out of all of this. I’ve been carrying around a belief that needs to go. No one has said terrible things about me yet. Maybe someone will someday, maybe they won’t. There is no point in believing it will happen. That just makes me vulnerable, to my own insecurities and hackers alike.
Kat, I’m so sorry this happened to you. It’s sad that people have nothing better to do than prey on others’ human vulnerabilities. By the way, I can’t imagine anyone ever saying terrible things about you. But here’s the thing: even if they did, SO WHAT? No one who matters at all would believe it.
I briefly had a twitter account, mostly so I could follow my daughter’s adventures. I never clicked on a link, or posted even once. But suddenly someone else was sending scam work-at-home tweets from my account. I have no idea how it happened – I just canceled the account as fast as I could and never went back.
You are so right Lee – “No one who matters at all would believe it.” That old belief is soooo gone!!
Kat, even though I don’t know you in person and just exchanged a couple of comments with you, I am convinced you are such a beautiful person. And I can’t imagine anyone who ever came in contact with you thinking otherwise. So please don’t fear people saying bad stuff about you. It would only show how they really do not know you. And anyone in their right mind would shake their head and move on, knowing the truth.
Keep up your wonderful work. You are an inspiration.
It’s so easy to believe bad things about ourselves, it’s easy to believe others would too! This was a good way for me to wake up and realize I should be a better supporter of myself! Thank you so much for your encouragement Karin.
So sorry this happened to you. The others are right – I can’t imagine anyone wanting to say bad stuff about you and even if they did, no-one would believe it so definitely time to let that one go!
Lucky that it wasn’t very serious, just a few tweets. I’m glad to have so many people who wouldn’t believe it!!
Kat, so sorry you had this bad experience. I know how you feel. Trust us, if anyone said any thing bad about you, we would never believe it!!!
Thanks Cathy, for your confidence in me!! 🙂
One more reason I don’t “tweet.”
Whether it’s tweets or facebook or email… doesn’t matter where we might fall for it. All the same. Unfortunately!
“The people that matter don’t mind and the people that mind don’t matter” a quote that makes a lot of sense!
Been there! Once you put yourself into the public eye you become vunerable to criticism and even mindless ridicule, unortunatley it goes with the territory. People see you as public property. How many suddenly famous stars there are who can’t cope with the terrible newspaper articles and criticism. The fear comes from our powerlessness over it, it may never happen to you but planning a strategy of coping with it wouldn’t hurt, just in case. Write down what you would do, how you would cope and follow your plan, should it ever happen. Also write a list of all your good points and achievements to read through when your feeling hurt. Pre-empt it and it will take the fear away.
I too fell victim this week despite knowing all the dangers, opened something up something I trusted on Facebook and meltdown, it totally wiped out my hard-drive. Happens to us al!!l
I’m so sorry to hear about your computer Helen! Thanks for sharing that quote. It rings very true.
It’s so hard for me to understand why people do this, but I guess we have to accept that there are people with evil intentions .As far as falling for it, we all have those nasty gremlins whispering those negative thoughts into our ears. Sometimes it’s too hard to resist this line of thinking. Forgive yourself.
I will never understand why people do things like this, or steal, or whatever. So little respect for another person! One good truth – most of the people in the world don’t do this to others. It’s just a small few.
Kat, that’s an important point to remember. It’s so easy to give those few more weight than they deserve and become discouraged or cynical about human nature.
Oh Kat, I’m sorry you have gone through this. It is so easy for it to happen though. Once bitten though – I bet you don’t get caught again.
I don’t believe anybody could say anything bad about you!!
Thanks Ellie. I will definitely be more careful in the future!
I have an unused pretty much, Twitter a/c, and I also received a msg like yours. I didn’t even bother to check ‘who’ it came from; just deleted it, thankfully. Good you’ve made others aware of what is happening out there, and will continue to, sadly.
Yes, it will continue. People are always out there to take advantage of our vulnerabilities. Glad you deleted!
Kat,
I was lucky. By the time I received your “hacked” tweet, the site was blocked. But I clicked on the link – I can’t say whether I would have logged in or not had I been given the chance. But like you, I believed the message – that someone was saying terrible things about me online. And I didn’t question that it happened – I immediately accepted it as true. Thank you for writing in such an eloquent way about what happened to you and how you used it to weed out a buried belief – now that it is in the open, you can eliminate it from your system. Something I too need to work on.
Isn’t it funny, how we’ll believe bad stuff about ourselves so easily! I’m so glad you didn’t get sucked into it, Brenda. Whew.
Isn’t it amazing how we continue to learn and improve every day? You go girl, keep thinking positive thoughts!
So sorry to hear about this, Kat, but great that you’ve managed to take something from it. I think nearly all of us suffer from this sort of fear; it’s quite a deeply-buried, primitive thing, as the threat of being thrown out of the tribe meant almost certain death in pre-historic times and evolution-wise we haven’t moved on much since then. I know it’s something that worries me too.
As many others have said, even if it were to happen, anyone who’s worth anything won’t believe that sort of stuff. They know you enough to know it wouldn’t be true.
Interesting thought about it being a primitive response, Gilly. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Thanks for bringing that up, and for your belief in me!
Kat – I’m so late in getting to this post but I saw it shortly after it was posted and my internet was so slow the page wouldn’t load.
I got that direct message from you and I knew immediately it wasn’t really from you but a spammer. I’ve known you a little through blogging for the past year and know that you would never write something like that. It was a valuable lesson for you and a great reminder to the rest of us not to click on lilnks though the pain and distress must have been awful for you once you discovered what happened.
Rosie