Tuesday, April 12, 2022

My hacked account ordeal and its recovery

A few Saturdays ago, one of my social media accounts got hacked. The following Sunday, I recovered it for five minutes. I saw this account get hacked again.

Recovering an account should not be difficult. It is.

My hacker changed my e-mail address and password. I had no choice but to do a video selfie, which compares video me against photos and videos of me on my feed.

It took me nine times to get my first confirmation. Ridiculous. I'm me. I have not had reconstructive surgery!

When you change your password to recover your account, you should get logged out of all app instances. Nope, this hacker was still logged in, and changed my e-mail, password, and handle.

Two-way authentication was on. It complicated things.

David versus Goliath.

I got help from my savvy contact. We planned for a few days. Our plan went down last night - successfully!

My video selfie was approved on the first try. You need great lighting. It helped!

Hacker had an IP address from Italy. My best shot was to recover in the wee hours Italy time. It worked.

When you do recover your account, do these steps:
1. Change your password again. You do it once before you access your recovered account. Do it again.
2. Change your e-mail account.
3. Turn on two-way authentication and make sure that you have it go to at least a text message.

I'm thankful to be back. This particular social medium had e-mails saying that you can click a link to secure your account when an unauthorized change occurs goes to FAQs. Not impressed. Do better.

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