Charity Sunday: Please Be Careful

 

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Dear Friends,

Rather than sharing a specific charity today, I want to share the story of my recent hacking to warn you all to be careful when donating or trying to help anyone build their platform.

From what I can tell, the attack on me had two parts. First, my phone account was hacked. We called my provider (Consumer Cellular) to activate a new sim card for my son's dad's phone (he is on our account.) When they asked if I wanted to activate an iPhone 6, I was puzzled but not alarmed. I had an iPhone in the late 20-teens. It died suddenly in 2020 and couldn't be revived. I said nobody on our account had an iPhone. I used to have an iPhone, but it stopped working years ago. 

I should have been much more alarmed by this, as when the other part of the attack happened, I kept getting messages that someone was logging into my accounts from an iPhone 6. When I tried to call from my current phone, I couldn't get a signal. The attackers had gone in and disabled my phone by erasing the IMEI number. My son speculates the attack was actually conducted by a bot, because my account information was reverted to a previous address.

The other part of the attack happened when I fell victim to a phishing scam. I can usually spot phishing emails, but the one I suspect contained the corrupt link looked legit. I had recently donated to a fellow author's Kickstarter campaign. I received an email, ostensibly from Kickstarter, about a campaign I might be interested in. I wanted to take a look and I clicked the link. 

If I hadn't had access to my ex-husband's phone, the attackers might have done a lot more damage. I had to cancel credit cards and change bank account numbers. I now use a two-password system for Proton Mail and two-factor authentification everywhere possible. I have not been best pleased with PayPal, who left the hinky email address planted by the hackers or their bot in my account. The bastards also sent out erroneous invoices from my PayPal, which makes me sick. I would never try to defraud people that way.

This attack also triggered an uptick in my PTSD. I felt completely helpless although I reacted as quickly as possible. It hasn't just been an inconvenience for me. The first day after it happened, I ended up sobbing hysterically, telling my son that it felt like being raped all over again. I was sexually assaulted by my ex-boyfriend in 1997. I went through a year of days spent fighting back to back panic attacks until I fell asleep from exhaustion, praying I'd die in my sleep so I didn't have to go through that again.

I've been able to stop the panic attacks from fully forming, but I'm very angry at myself for not being more vigilant. This incident hasn't only affected me. My son, my ex-husband and I are three vulnerable people with neurological differences who support each other. My ex-husband is an Aspie who, because of certain types of trauma in his life, does not know how to respond to a person experiencing distress. He walks away to keep from becoming overwhelmed.

My son is a brilliant 34-year-old high-functioning autistic man. He is our house manager as he is good with finances and knows how to work with both my ADHD and his father's tendency to isolate. However, he can become overwhelmed, and the circumstances of this incident have clearly upset him. He tends to sleep during the day when he's overstimulated. 

I asked my son if this was the case because I need to be able to plan for when to serve meals. He said he's trying to get his sleep schedule back on track, but this recent situation put things out of balance. I apologized for bringing this chaos on the house. He said my apologizing for this was like someone apologizing because they got mugged. 

I keep vacillating between rage and despair. My editing business was just starting to take off, but I've had to suspend operations until all the crap on my PayPal account can be cleared up. I did manage to submit a twisted Christmas story to Dragon Soul Press for their Beautiful Darkness 3 anthology and I submitted a Lovecraftian fantasy about a group of animals in a magical menagerie for this month's AutoCrit competition. It won't win, none of my stories ever do. I'm an acquired taste that most people don't tend to acquire.

I hope somehow I manage to leave a bad taste in the mouth of the hackers. I seem to have mitigated most of the damage. I told my brother this was a Lights of Zetar attack. If you've ever watched the original Star Trek series, the Lights of Zetar are an energy colony that is very destructive but also extremely stupid. 

I wish they'd end up in jail. Or at the bottom of a vat of sewage. Either one works. 

I've learned that if I'm ever interested in something I receive in an email, I'll do a search for it online. I'm not clicking anymore email links.

Be careful out there.