Hacked!

It seemed like such a wonderful day (as wonderful as one can be at work anyway) until I started receiving email receipts from itunes. I don't even use itunes so that led me to conclusion that my previous Gmail hacking from last week had spread.

As I was on eternal hold on the phone with my bank I received ANOTHER email receipt from Paypal for fifty some dollars. The day was turning south fast and the fact someone was on a shopping spree with my money while I was holding started to frustrate me. Finally I got someone at my bank to close my account and I could then contact Paypal and put a hold on that.
Once that was taken care of I went to find the itunes customer service number.
Unfortunately there wasn't a number I could find on their website so I ended up having to send an EMAIL. I am not sure if they will get back to me or not but needless to say if you have an itunes account I would be extra cautious. That's what started this whole disaster of a day and they don't even have a phone number. If they do they sure hid it well.

I feel somewhat paranoid about all this and think I need to limit how many accounts I have all over the internet.I'll probably only keep Flickr, TypePad, Etsy, and my Ning accounts.

I'll be saying farewell to Facebook and all the other random little places I used to visit as well as my email address. If you are still using the stacilf(at)gmail(dot)com please delete it from your address book since I will be creating a new hopefully hacker-proof one.

The lessons I learned in this is:

Those are just some tips...simple and obvious I know but good little things to remember. I started out online doing those things..but then I fell off the wagon somewhere and started being lazy. I am not sure if any of those reasons was the cause for my being hacked. Still, it could have helped prevent this incident.

It's time to start deleting and recreating my online accounts now. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
Surely a trip to Barnes & Noble couldn't hurt. :)