I've been gone for a couple of days. Did anybody notice?
Didn't think so. I wasn't kidnapped, deported to El Salvadore, or lost in the wilderness. Our computer was hacked/corrupted and required some downtime for repairs. If you've ever had this happen to you or yours, you know what we're going through. What a pain in the A$$ and I use the dollar signs appropriately. It's expensive, time consuming, and a little bit scary that someone has invaded your space. From what we learned, the intrusion began late Monday or early Tuesday. Primarily, they were after money as they were poking around in my 401K. At the same time, they punked our land line so we had no house phone. That prompted a visit by the police as our bank tried calling us with an alert but there was no answer. That triggered a "welfare check"! So, the cops come to the door, the dog goes nuts, and so begins the next 48 hours of mahem. All of our investments have been locked down, it'll take days to regain access. No money was lost that we know of, thankfully. Mostly just time spent with our banking people to close out accounts and reopen new ones. Computer repairs were just under $200, so we're back up and running. The graphics need a little work but that will come around soon enough.
I keep a good record of all our passwords, but just the same, it'll be days before we get everything back to as it was. Obviously, we'll be taking some new precautions to prevent this in the future.
Probably the worst moment is when I realized that I'd JUST paid our Income Tax, State and Federal, with an account that no longer exists. We had to scramble to make those checks good before they bounced me right in to the grasp of the IRS. I've heard they take a dim view of bad checks!
To quote my wife, "why would they put all that effort in to trying to steal when they could get a real job and make some real money?" But they didn't, they won't and they'll keep trying to hack the next family. I certainly hope it's not yours.
Two things I learned, the source of my troubles originated somewhere in Central Florida and the Fraud teams that we've been working with say they're busier than ever. There's more of this happening all the time.
Me thinks we're gonna need more prisons!
