Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash
Sometimes you just have to deal with the most irritable situations.
On Friday I just had a crazy day. I'm using PRESEARCH instead of Google Search. In Presearch, for every search you perform, you get rewarded in PRE tokens.
On Friday I just thought it would be interesting to see what's happening in my PRE account. What I found though, was that since December 10, I haven't been credited for my searches.
I created a query, asking them to please look into the matter.
Shortly after that, I opened my email and I saw my "ticket" has been created and they would look into the matter.
A little later, I checked my email again, I saw another new email.
Yes, I wasn't alert enough, I just saw there was a crypto label on the email, and without thinking, I opened it because I was pressed for time.
As I opened it, I immediately realized what was going on. Some dumb idiot hacked my email and was now trying to scare me, threatening to blackmail me.
I didn't even bother to finish reading his nonsense, because two years ago, I had a similar experience.
Two years ago, I also received this strange email, but the sender showed it as "me". At that point, I thought maybe it was something I sent to someone that I just couldn't recall at that moment.
But as I opened it, it started with this junk about how this is bad news for me... He hacked my account and he knows what I'm watching and about "the sites I'm visiting" and if I didn't pay a certain amount in Bitcoin into some wallet address within a specified time, to the value of about $10'000.00, he was going to expose me by showing this to my family and friends and make it public all over the internet. According to him, he could see everything I was doing on my computer and I don't know what else...
My first response was just getting angry and irritated, deleting it, changing my passwords, and moving on. But my wife was more concerned and asked me to seek legal help or any help to assist me as you never know what kind of nonsense they can create on the internet and make it look real. She based her concern on how they create letters and documents on false letterheads from banks that look so realistic that you can't tell the difference.
I reached out to a well-known private investigator here in South Africa and asked for his advice.
He asked me whether I was involved in sending or receiving any photos that were in bad taste or did I visit any "funny" websites.
The answer to all of the above was obviously "no"!
He told me there are syndicates at work. They hack email addresses all over the world and then randomly send these "threatening" emails out in masses. Then they wait to get responses.
Somewhere they would obviously find somebody with a "guilty conscience", who would get scared and rather pay the money. But as he also said, once they've got you, it becomes a never-ending story and it just gets worse and worse.
So to them, it's almost like sending out those emails and then it becomes a waiting game to see who is going to pay.
So, he told me to just ignore it and see what happens. If they bother me again, he would launch an investigation and start hunting them down. But he was convinced that nothing would come of the whole thing. I should just ignore it and move on.
Both my sons-in-law are working in the IT industry and the one did a search on the IP address and traced it to a location in Russia.
So, now, back to Friday, I should have seen the same pattern, with the sender showing as "me". But I was rushing through it, just saw a crypto label, and opened it.
So again, I get irritated beyond words because some spineless creepy, peace of scum can't keep his ugly little fingers to himself. It disgusts me that you find people who have the cheek to poke their noses into other people's accounts where have no business whatsoever.
I didn't even waste my time to read the rest of this junk this time as I recognized the same pattern as that of two years ago.
About four years ago, a registered a domain in my own name and created some content on it.
Soon I got so bombarded with spam on it (although I always just deleted it), but I started losing interest as it became more of a frustration than a pleasure.
I stopped posting to it, yet I renewed the domain registration every year...just in incase.
One day I went into the back office and I found an incredible amount of spam and some links leading to distasteful websites that I would not want to be associated with.
Again, I deleted it, but I found that when I do a search for my domain (registered as my own name and surname), sometimes those ugly links would also pop up.
Recently, I again wanted to log into the back office just to see what's going on, and there was a notification of some updates to be done. I clicked the update button and suddenly it seemed as if the site has crashed. I cannot even get into the back office.
Even when I type the domain name directly into the search bar, it just tells you "this site can't be reached".
I went to Google Drive where I saved some of the drafts of the posts I have written, and I couldn't believe it, looking at one of the drafts in a WORD document in Google Drive, I also found a link that I most definitely have nor put there, neither would I want to be associated with it.
So they definitely must have been able to get into my account and try and do their messy stuff.
I don't know if maybe they thought I haven't published that post yet and that I wouldn't pick it up before I published it.
But I have the habit to proofread my draft up to at least 3 to 4 times, to make sure there are minimal mistakes if any.
The disturbing fact is, they were definitely able to get access to my computer and spread havoc wherever they could.
Fortunately, they weren't able to get into any of my wallets or bank account.
But the lesson I have learned is this:
I create passwords on one of these programs where you can create passwords and store them within the program/platform.
But the big mistake I was still making, is to:
Leave my computer on when I would go out, knowing that I wouldn't be gone for too long.
I would turn my computer off at night, but not log out of the password program.
I don't know if they can get access to my computer while it's turned off, but I'm no longer taking that risk.
I will also rather turn my computer off when I'm not working for whatever reason, such as going out or whatever.
I realize that it serves little to no purpose to store all your passwords in one safe place but then never log out of the program. Silly me! That one is on me. It's my own fault for not being careful enough.
Take note. You are sitting in your home or office. You don't even see anybody else. You're all alone. You don't feel threatened because nothing or nobody is threatening you...
Not true.
Somewhere, there is a slimy, spineless, brainless cockroach who is trying to get his filthy little fingers into your computer and see if he can steal from you.
If he cannot get his hands on your finances, such as bank accounts and/or crypto wallets, he tries to cause havoc and fear by doing what I described above.
If you don't waste your time with nonsense, there is nothing to fear. But it remains aggravating and frustrating to know that these idiots come in and mess around in your private space where they have no business.
It's sickening and sad, but unfortunately, this is the world we are living in.
You always have to be on the lookout. Security must be taken to the highest level possible to you.
But won't that become a shlep? Yes, it would require some extra effort every day. But the choice is...will you rather deal with the inconvenience or do you want to be a target of crime?
I know of people here on the blockchain who experienced far more traumatic experiences than mine.
If you have experienced anything of this kind, please share it with us. I'm asking this so that everybody can realize the reality of it and how serious and dangerous this can be.
It can range from just being annoying, to losing your life savings.
The type of low-life scum we are dealing with here has no morals, they have no respect for your privacy. They don't care if they ruin you, financially or emotionally as a person.
I recently also had a similar experience on Instagram, where this idiot was trying to get into one of my crypto wallets, but that's another story for another post.
Thank you for reading my post. I really do appreciate it.
