I was hacked

I woke up this morning to find out that the Organic Stills e-mail account had been hacked and somebody had sent an e-mail to everybody on my contact list asking for money. Thankfully, most people are pretty familiar with this type of cheap tactic that scammers are currently using and don't actually send money their way.

So, here's how it worked for me. At first I just couldn't log into my gmail account (which this blog is also attached to I should add). I went to hit the "reset password" button and was told that the link needed was sent to my yahoo account. The problem being that I don't have a yahoo account. Obviously when they hacked me, they had changed the alternate address provided. I had to fill out the Google form giving them all the information I could possible think of to verify that it's me. An hour later, Google sends me an e-mail telling me that they've looked into it and verify that I can now go back in and reset my settings, which I do. I find myself looking at the e-mails they sent in my sent mail folder, as well as the alternate e-mail address they registered so that I couldn't reset my password. I'm currently looking into notifying the appropriate authorities with all of this information.

My biggest concern of course was the impression that would be left upon the various people on my contacts list receiving an e-mail like that from me. I can only hope they are understanding. I've updated my security settings on every account I can think of right now and I am considering myself incredibly fortunate that they only had access to my account for a very short period of time and there appears to have been no intent other than trying the trust of my clients, friends and family members. I will of course be closely monitoring the situation until I can consider myself to be all clear.