yay, I suck
My gmail account got hacked today. So I'm not really trying to sell you cheap pills, in case you got a weird email from me. And I thought I had a fairly strong password too. I guess I just got complacent, and should have changed it more often. I got lucky too, because Google does a good job at blocking most outbound spam as well, and locked my account due to suspicious activity.
From what I can see, 200 spam emails got sent from my account, and most of them either bounced (the recipient no longer exists) or were blocked before they ever left gmail's servers. Still, it's going to be embarrassing explaining this to the people to whom delivery was successful.
The account is now unlocked, and I've changed the password to something stronger. Google's page for changing your password checks the strength of your password as you type it. So if you have a gmail account, go check/change your password now. If you don't use gmail, then check to see if your email provider does something similar (and take advantage of it).
I can't stress this enough: use a strong password. Pet names and birthdays are a big no-no, for example. Mine was stronger than that, but I still got hacked (apparently it wasn't strong enough). I've seen this happen before to people I know, but this is the first time I've been bitten by it. Yes, I'm wearing the dunce hat for the remainder of the day.
If you don't know where to start, then this is probably a good place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength
It probably goes into too much technical detail for most people, but the section on Guidelines For Strong Passwords is probably readable by most people.
From what I can see, 200 spam emails got sent from my account, and most of them either bounced (the recipient no longer exists) or were blocked before they ever left gmail's servers. Still, it's going to be embarrassing explaining this to the people to whom delivery was successful.
The account is now unlocked, and I've changed the password to something stronger. Google's page for changing your password checks the strength of your password as you type it. So if you have a gmail account, go check/change your password now. If you don't use gmail, then check to see if your email provider does something similar (and take advantage of it).
I can't stress this enough: use a strong password. Pet names and birthdays are a big no-no, for example. Mine was stronger than that, but I still got hacked (apparently it wasn't strong enough). I've seen this happen before to people I know, but this is the first time I've been bitten by it. Yes, I'm wearing the dunce hat for the remainder of the day.
If you don't know where to start, then this is probably a good place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength
It probably goes into too much technical detail for most people, but the section on Guidelines For Strong Passwords is probably readable by most people.