Back Up Your Blog Content!

Friends, as you know, I oft lean toward my lighter side, my whimsy, sarcasm (perhaps?), and apparently my "self-indulgent" wittiness. But, yesterday, was fairly traumatic for me, so I'm going to have to tone down the glitter and talk real with you. 

It all started with a Facebook message on the Fashion Momma page, Wednesday night. I logged in to check my personal stuff, when I noticed there was a message. It was from "Mary Sivortne." The message started off pleasantly enough. She/He complimented me on my sartorial choices, writing skills, and the adorableness that is Little S. This person quickly left her warm intro and jumped into an epic paragraph about all the things she/he did not like about my blog. First and foremost, I complain too much about not having the chance to be a stay-at-home mom to Little S. Second, I complain too much about my husband having to work night shift. Third, I complain too much about where I live and how I'd rather be back in Virginia with my friends and family. This person called me selfish, conceited, self-indulgent, transparent, and ungrateful, among too many other adjectives to remember. This person said that I have no right to complain about having to work, because the economy is so bad that I'm blessed to have a job. This person said that I'm selfish and transparent, that I should be thankful for the ability to have children and to have a husband who is alive and working to support his family. This person compared my complaints to the disaster in Japan, and tried to put my "complaining" into perspective. This person also decided to close her/his message with something along the lines of, "Just because your have good writing skills doesn't mean that what you have to say is important enough to be published for public reading. You really have nothing good to say."

You might ask why I keep referring to "Mary" as "she/he" or "this person." Well, after taking a good 20-30 minutes, trying to decide what a civil and appropriate response would be to such a message, I clicked "reply" and I get: Profile no longer exists. So, now, friends... I have to know. Did "Mary" create a fake facebook profile just to tell me how horrible of a person I am? Before you tell me that I'm not any of those things, don't worry. I know that. Is that self-indulgent of me? That I know I'm not selfish and ungrateful? I was simply going to tell "Mary" that if she didn't like my blog, there was no pressure to continue reading, that I'm grateful for a job, and I don't wish to have the opportunity taken away as much as I wish I didn't have to pay someone else to essential raise my child. Part of me was glad that the profile was gone, because the message wasn't worth my time to respond, anyway. Part of me was worried that I'm totally off-base and am portraying myself as this person "Mary" described. Eventually (by 3:00 am), I fell asleep, and woke up a few hours later without a thought in the world about the message.

And then, all hell broke loose at work, today. My Disqus account was hacked and was spamming people who either follow my blog or subscribe to my comments. Within 10 minutes after Disqus was hacked, my personal email was sending out spam emails to random people in my contacts. At that point, I felt violated, but figured I could handle it and get things under control. A few minutes later, though, I was locked out of my email AND my Facebook accounts. And when I didn't think matters could get much worse, my mom called to notify me that when she went to my blog URL, a message popped back saying, "This blog no longer exists." At that point, I contacted our IT guy at work. He came to check out my computer and found that the hacker disarmed Symantec antivirus AND blocked my ability to download anything else to the computer (ie: anti-malware or spyware software). Throughout the remainder of the day, I was traveling to different computers and even using my cell phone to change and update account information for all the places that were hacked. EACH time I changed my email password, the hacker changed it so I couldn't access the refreshed account, within 10 minutes of my recovering things. 

Is "Mary" related to this series of incidents? I honestly have no idea.

Strange that I received the comment right before doomsday, though!

I received notification that this hijacking of my accounts was not a "normal" virus that follows usual protocol. The virus wasn't dropped on my computer to hack all of my accounts and send information to the jerk who did it. Instead, the accounts were hacked, one by one, and when the hacker got deep enough into things and was able to access enough information to get to my work computer, he/she dropped a virus down as a final "Got ya, b!%tch!" From what we know, this hacking was malicious in nature and I am sick from all of it. Clearly, I've restored things for now. I plan to change some things, permanently, but I'll need to do it all from home. I will no longer be reading, commenting on, or posting blogs from my office. It's a huge bummer, because blog reading/commenting is my lunch break treat. But I just can't trust it, again. I feel safe with my MAC at home, so just be aware that I might not be able to comment as often as I used to. It doesn't mean I've stopped reading! 

In the meantime, please protect your content by backing up your blogs. There is a great tutorial for backing up blogger content HERE. After seeing what happened to me, today, several of my blog/twitter friends decided to back up their content. I've done it as well. 

More than anything, I'm extremely sad that

- I've seriously made someone angry, and I don't understand why

- Someone would go so far just to get a rise

(mission accomplished, by the way. good job.)

- People spend their time doing this kind of crap...