All "Hacked" Up!

“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him - Henry L. Stimson”

So it finally happened! Mike and I were hacked! All these years we have gone safely and never had an interruption in any of our personal websites such as emails, banks, etc. Well today I received that dreaded email “Your password has been changed – if you were not the one to do this, please contact…” At first I thought it was one of those scam emails that say something has been changed to your bank so please send us your account number and so on, but it wasn’t, it was our MD Anderson website.

Because this website holds personal health information, contact information and correspondence between our doctors, I immediately called the MD Anderson website and reported the email I received and to my surprise, our password REALLY had been changed…not by us nor MD Anderson. I asked if it was maybe a monthly random act that the website does for protection, but it wasn’t…someone actually logged on and answered our personal questions and changed our password. Now granted the questions and answers were easy, so anyone who knows us could have accessed it. Well we have now learned our lesson and a few additional ones while we were at it.

First of all, again, because this is a website that holds such private information I did have MD Anderson investigate and they were able to retrieve an IP address. Unfortunately that is all they could provide, so we took it a step further. I spoke to the Houston Police Department and just as hacking into someone’s email, by logging onto the MD site and because it is a personal site and has email function, it is considered a felony forgery charge – wow! I had no idea! I submitted the IP address to the Police Department and we are awaiting a call now to find the results. Thank goodness for technology! I am not sure as to what our next step will be when we retrieve the information from the PD but Mike is adamant about pursuing charges if necessary.

Ugh! It’s such a feeling of violation! All I can say to all is, when setting up accounts, whether email or any others, be very specific and not so lenient when setting passwords or security questions. It is a shame to think that someone would do this, but you live and learn and learn we did. I hope this is help to someone who has been a victim and Mike and I know now in the future to be more careful.

Till next time…