Tumblr Account Hacked
I remember a book in the SF Masterworks series that I read, Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. By the time the protagonist was an old man he was considered a god, but was paid "no great reverence." I decided to Google that exact phrase looking for the full passage for that quotation. Found I had to make it "him no great reverence" before I got correct results appearing.
The top-ranked result is currently from a Tumblr blog. I can view the blogs on Tumblr, but I can no longer log into it. I had created a blog on Tumblr a long time ago but abandoned it after a while, yet when I returned I discovered my account had been terminated due to "spam or affiliate marketing"!
It made me think of something strange that had happened to my Twitter account. I was galled to discover one day after I had not been there in a long time either that it was regularly tweeting spam. Some nonsense about how I had done some surveys and was making hundreds of dollars a day. I know that it wasn't just my account because a friend told me the same thing happened to him. I logged in, deleted all ten or so the spam tweets, and then changed my password. Since then, my Twitter account has been fine.
It seems, however, that my Tumblr account was not so lucky. I've tried to contact a human being on that website to explain that I am a victim of identity theft, but no one has replied to my email. I think that it is a largely automated system. So unless I create a new email address — and I am loath to do this — I don't have whatever advantages someone has who has a Tumblr account.
One thing I do now, however, that I did not do before is use a password repository. I have a different password for every website I visit. It is always at least eight characters, including both capital and lowercase letters and punctuation marks. Let this be a reminder to everyone out there that identity theft and getting your accounts hacked into is very real, and stay vigilant!
The top-ranked result is currently from a Tumblr blog. I can view the blogs on Tumblr, but I can no longer log into it. I had created a blog on Tumblr a long time ago but abandoned it after a while, yet when I returned I discovered my account had been terminated due to "spam or affiliate marketing"!
It made me think of something strange that had happened to my Twitter account. I was galled to discover one day after I had not been there in a long time either that it was regularly tweeting spam. Some nonsense about how I had done some surveys and was making hundreds of dollars a day. I know that it wasn't just my account because a friend told me the same thing happened to him. I logged in, deleted all ten or so the spam tweets, and then changed my password. Since then, my Twitter account has been fine.
It seems, however, that my Tumblr account was not so lucky. I've tried to contact a human being on that website to explain that I am a victim of identity theft, but no one has replied to my email. I think that it is a largely automated system. So unless I create a new email address — and I am loath to do this — I don't have whatever advantages someone has who has a Tumblr account.
One thing I do now, however, that I did not do before is use a password repository. I have a different password for every website I visit. It is always at least eight characters, including both capital and lowercase letters and punctuation marks. Let this be a reminder to everyone out there that identity theft and getting your accounts hacked into is very real, and stay vigilant!
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