Saturday, November 12, 2011

Good Morning, Bad Morning

Yesterday, was a good morning.

I was awakened by a phone call at about 7:00 a.m.
47 minutes before my alarm. 
'Daniel Calling.' Huh? Weird. 
(...he never calls me, haha)
I answered only to find that it was a pocket dial 
(at least I'm assuming -- I only heard silence on the other end).

Usually i don't mind getting woken up to phone calls
 because i never have much of a problem falling back to sleep. 
But yesterday morning i was actually grateful.
  I had wanted to get up early
(partially due to a particularly persuasive speech in my public speaking class the day before)
 and i was already awake enough so i figured i might as well use the time productively! 

I read the Book of Mormon for 30 minutes
 (a daily goal i sent this past February that i haven't been doing too well at lately.) 
I did some homework. 
I responded to some emails i had been avoiding (work stuff).
I caught up on a few guiltily pleasure TV shows that will remain nameless.
I even made Banana pancakes.
Pardon my tie-dye shirt. Pardon my hair. Pardon my abnormally large forehead.
 Mainly just focus on how happy i look to have those FABULOUS banana pancakes. 
They were delicious. 

To top it ALL off...i ACTUALLY got ready. 
(..let's just say...this semester I've been a liiiitle lax in the "getting ready" department..
....I think I've probably done my hair maybe 10 times..? haha. oops...) 



Today, was a bad morning.

I was awakened by a text at about 6:40 a.m.
It was Cory. (One of my council members.)
I don't usually wake up to texts but for some reason I woke up to this one.
This text told me my email account had been hacked. 

Fantastic.

I immediately went to my computer and this is what i saw:

ARABIC.

Luckily, i happened to have my gmail account still opened in another window so i was able to switch it back to English without too much hassle.

I quickly changed my password and then I went to Facebook to update my status and inform my friends (100s of which "I" emailed) that I was NOT in stuck in the UK, and NOT mugged, and NOT being yelled at by an angry hotel manager. 

While I was doing this, seriously the freakiest thing happened. 

I saw "myself" chatting with people. 
Lots of people.
Every single one of my FB friends that just so happened to be online! 
"I" would say "hey" or "hi" and then when they responded.
 "I" would say "I'm in trouble. I need help."

Yes, you understood that right. 
I was WATCHING "myself" FB chat with my friends...
 while my hands weren't even touching the keyboard.

I immediately updated my status again informing everyone that my Facebook account was also hacked and the person (thing?/computer? robot?) was NOT me!! 

The next hour and a half (give or take) was spent trying to recover my gmail and facebook.
I don't want to bore you with the details,
(though they are quite dramatic and interesting/creepy if you ask me)
 but just a word from the
 not-so-wise-who-has-recently-wised-up:
DO NOT HAVE THE SAME PASSWORD FOR YOUR EMAIL AND FACEBOOK.

Long story short, the hackers changed my FB password locking ME out of the account!!
 I was able to answer a series of security questions so eventually FB temporarily shut down my account and texted me a security code that I used to reactivate it and change my password.

Meanwhile, they (the hackers) changed the security question on my gmail!!
 "what is your library card number?" 
I don't even have a library card here!! 
(okay, I do. I've used it twice...)
I would never set that as a question!

Eventually I was able to get gmail to also send a verification code to my mobile device, too.
(I'm lucky I had that information programmed into both of those things
 or i literally don't think i would have ever been able to get control of my accounts back)

ONE MORE IMPORTANT THING:
Although I was able to get access to my accounts back, the hackers did a few other tricky (and incredibly scary/creepy things). They created an email address called hannah.flinder@gmail.com and set up my email address to FORWARD ALL emails to that account!! Luckily I caught this trick, BUT the account "hannah.flinder@gmail.com still exists and has ALL of my contacts' information!! 

SOOO: IF YOU RECEIVE A SUSPICIOUS EMAIL FROM ME, BE SURE IT IS NOT FROM HANNAH.FLINDER!!!!!!!!!!!

(I'm sorry for the yelling text. i don't mean to be rude, that part is just really important.) 

Okay, I think that rant is over. 

But sadly my "bad morning" was not.

I had intended to use my precious hours this morning to finish an assignment for my art class (VAEDU360...visual art education for El Ed majors).

But this set back was...well....a set back!

I was still able to get most of my assignment done on time, 
but then I remembered that my teacher told us we'd get extra credit if we brought food! 
If you know me, you know I love a lot of things;
extra credit and food being near the top of the list.

(i don't know if that semi-colon is being used correctly, i just wanted to use one.)

I was quite pleased to discover 
that i had all the makin's for no bake cookies! 
So I made them. 
Then I put them on foil and waited for them to "set."

I waited....

and waited.....


and waited...


You know that saying "a watched-pot never boils"?
Well I guess the same thing goes for "watched-no-bake cookies never set." 



Finally I gave up.
 I rolled up those gooey messes in the tin foil and took them to class.
25 minutes late.
Yes, I was almost 30 minutes late for class..
...because my extra credit wasn't done in time.
Ironic, no?


Well, all in all. Some mornings are good, and some are...less than desirable. 
But even then,
that shouldn't stop us from being
 "merry happy"
:)






3 comments:

  1. That really is creepy!! Good catch with the fake e-mail being set up! You look cute in the pictures!

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  2. That really sucks! My g-mail was recently hacked into by an IP address in Mexico and I had to change that password. Luckily I noticed it in like a minute b/c google is smart and realizes I NEVER log in from Mexico. Still a hassle though. And now my passwords for Facebook and Gmail are brand new and a lot more difficult to hack. Glad you got it all working again though! If nothing else, you learned the intricacy of internet security....everything will give us experience and be for our good (eventually).

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  3. ewww... I didn't realize it got worse after I talked to you... hopefully I can learn from your experience and not have that happen to me...

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