My friend Phoebus had his hotmail account hacked a month ago. A wealth of email addresses and saved emails and pictures have been inaccessible to him. Plus I was getting spammed from his account. Using technology for selling snake oil is not something I approve of.
So, I connected with him on Skype and we chatted, he was in England a few days ago and in some Caribbean Island today when we chatted again. I offered to help him clear his account. I am sure he will be buying me a Guinness when we meet in the UK one day. I was able to reset his password and his security questions by prodding his memory and my archive email folders for details about his account, such as email names, titles, content, etc. as well as other email accounts he has. About an hour later, mission accomplished, he was in his email again! Another satisfied customer. The global reach and ability to tech-assist is fantastic.
My aunt the other day was in an Arabian country and was having Skype problems. She called me for help and was able to help her. I connected with the regular land line and realized that she misplaced her Skype login credentials. So I was able to connect remotely to her computer in Cyprus, spend a few hours, and track her other Skype accounts -- she had 4 other accounts. We picked one and we restored that account going through the profile settings and restoring her connection to her global family! Another happy customer!
BTW, my account was hacked by computers that appeared to reside in southeast Asia about a month ago. It was not a big deal to me to go in and create stronger passwords and new security questions -- tip: my questions and answers do not match, for example, if the question is favorite color, my answer could be "pastichio". It seems that the hackers were able to mimic the sign-in credentials for email sending and address lookup, but not really get into the emails and cause serious privacy damage. Whatever the vulnerability with Hotmail was, I am sure the Hotmail people fixed it already.
No comments:
Post a Comment