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View Full Version : Something really yucky happened to me on the old forum



KarenB
11-20-2008, 08:12 AM
Hi all,

I received a Google alert on Office Support 911 and when I followed the link it brought me to a post on the other small business forum. A post I never wrote!

It was some guy trying to start a new company and asking all sorts of questions about something I have never even heard of.

Needless to say, I reported the post immediately and asked them to cancel my account. I'm afraid to research how many other posts are under my name that I didn't make.

Is it really possible for someone to hack in to your username and profile and change headings on their own posts?

This really creeped me out.

Thanks,

Karen

KarenB
11-20-2008, 10:24 AM
I've been in touch with the moderators and hopefully they will delete the entire thread. I discovered the actual user who posted it and have sent that information to their board administrators.

Believe it or not, this post was from 2006. Stuff truly does stay on the internet forever. I think I'm going to Google myself and my business to ensure that everything out there in cyberspace is truly mine.

To make matters worse, this post was about some sort of get-rich-quick scheme that I never, in a million years, would be involved with. I can just imagine some of my clients reading that and thinking, "What the...?"

Blessed
11-20-2008, 11:02 AM
Oh My - that is yucky! I hope you get it all straightened out quickly!

KarenB
11-20-2008, 11:56 AM
Thanks Blessed,

I also discovered that some genuine posts that I did make have been attributed to someone else. That's not cool either.

To their credit, the mods of that forum have been super-responsive to my inquiry and are doing their best to rectify the situation.

I guess the valuable lesson I have learned is that every business owner should join Google Alerts and check on their own business activity from time to time. Google Alerts will let you know each time something comes up in its search engine about you. I have to say that I was shocked and amazed to see this old post appear under my name, and it wasn't even my post!

Google Alerts will help you track your own internet presence, and I am very glad that I had subscribed to it.

It's free and you can get onboard via:

Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts)

I strongly recommend it.

Karen

KristineS
11-20-2008, 03:38 PM
Wow, Karen, I'm sorry this happened to you.

It is a good lesson for all of us though. I watch all the activity for our companies and for myself quite closely. I'm out in cyberspace enough that it would be pretty easy for someone to pose as me if they wished. I want to find anything like that and stop it as soon as I can.

I hope the moderators at the old forum handle the situation quickly.

billbenson
11-20-2008, 04:35 PM
It also is a reason not to use your real info on the internet if you don't need to. This has come up in other posts, but I'm not selling anything here although I do network through forums so I don't include a sig or other personal info. I don't use particularly complicated passwords on forums. Maybe I should rethink that. For important stuff I use 12 character passwords including punctuation when accepted generated from password generators. This might demonstrate a reason to use complicated passwords on things such as forums as well.

KarenB
11-20-2008, 05:45 PM
Thanks for your words of caution, Bill. I agree.

One of the reasons that I have joined networking sites is to promote my business and give out my real information.

Essentially, I am an internet-based business and rely heavily on the integrity of the internet. The entire concept of my business is "virtual", so it doesn't instill a whole lot of faith in my clients when they can't trust that what they see is the truth.

I have a whole lot more research to do on this entire subject and will probably post about it on my blog.

Thanks so much for your input.

Karen

KarenB
11-20-2008, 05:50 PM
Wow, Karen, I'm sorry this happened to you.

It is a good lesson for all of us though. I watch all the activity for our companies and for myself quite closely. I'm out in cyberspace enough that it would be pretty easy for someone to pose as me if they wished. I want to find anything like that and stop it as soon as I can.

I hope the moderators at the old forum handle the situation quickly.

Thanks, Kristine.

It just came as such a shock. I think we all have a responsibility to ourselves to monitor our own internet presence, especially those of us who do business exclusively by this method as opposed to brick-and-mortar.

Yes, I will be a lot more vigilant from now on.

Thanks,

Karen

billbenson
11-20-2008, 06:25 PM
Here's a link for a password generator I use. There are plenty of others out there. You can save it in an excel file so you can copy and paste. Save it in a way that someone can't figure out what it is a password to and you are really safe. Don't save it in a text file.

Security Guide for Windows - Random Password Generator (http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/)

vangogh
11-20-2008, 08:26 PM
Sorry this happened to you Karen. It's possible someone could have hacked your username and password, but I have a hunch it has to do with something getting messed up when they had database issues. I bet some of the posts got crossed with different users.

At least they're responding to your inquiries and will hopefully be able to fix the problem. I wonder if similar things have happened to other members.

orion_joel
11-20-2008, 08:26 PM
Not to be defending what has happened on the other site at all, but i think it is probably more a residual from the crashes they had, i noticed after they recovered from the last time, there was some things move around like wrong member against wrong post.

vangogh
11-20-2008, 11:21 PM
That's what I was thinking probably happened, though it's something that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Still I'm not thinking it was someone else hijacking Karen's username.

Steve B
11-21-2008, 01:55 AM
Steve, isn't this what we suspected happend Corey Bryann't's username?

He didn't make any posts for months and months and then he suddenly makes one benign post and goes away again. It was hard to believe it was the same person making the post.

KarenB
11-21-2008, 08:17 AM
Thanks for all your support everyone. Yes, it probably just was a glitch in their system, but it has made me more conscious that anything is possible on the internet. I'll keep you posted as to the outcome.

I really appreciate your password suggestion, too, Bill.

Thanks again, all!

Karen

vangogh
11-21-2008, 08:40 AM
Steve, something strange definitely happened with Corey's post. That didn't seem like him at all and I suspect it was someone else using his username to post.

Karen hopefully they'll get your posts sorted out at the old forum. It's really not something that should have happened in the first place, but it does sound more like a glitch than someone with malicious intent trying to hurt your reputation.

cbscreative
11-23-2008, 04:50 PM
Sorry to hear about your situation, Karen, but I think I would agree that the problem is more likely related to crossed wires than a hacking. I did notice that they had some real database issues when they finally "recovered" the last time. Like vangogh said though, that never really should have happened either. Now it looks like the screw up is causing you unnecessary grief that I'm sure they never anticipated, and you should not have to be dealing with. If so, a strong password wouldn't have made any difference.