I was just reading about the whole gmail fiasco of the morning and, while I totally empathize with the people who have lost their accounts, I have to tell you something. It could be worst!
But I lost EVERYTHING! Contacts. Phone numbers. Email confirmations. Password verifications to websites I use once a year. (You get the drift.) Yes. I understand. And I absolutely get how horrible it is. But listen to what happened to me over the summer.
I had to wake up early to drive 2 hours to AI duPont Hospital to bring Lennon to his ophthalmologist appointment. I checked my email and Facebook quickly before packing up the car. Everything was going along smoothly. Appointment went well and we headed out to the playground like we always do after seeing the doctor. Well, that’s when things started going horribly wrong.
I got a phone call from my sister saying I should check my email. As I’m asking her why, I get the first of many text messages. From the videographer of our wedding. Telling me that my email was hacked. Of course, I was 2 hours away from home so what the heck am I supposed to do? I get the basics from my sis and hang up to try and catch my husband before he leaves for work. He hops on the computer and confirms the worst. I’m locked out of Hotmail.
But wait. It gets worst. How? Well, remember I’m 2 hours from home. I’m trying to figure out over the phone what is going on and my not-so-tech-savvy husband is doing his best to help me. That’s when I find out not only am I locked out of Hotmail, but I’m locked out of Facebook, too! (I’ll give that a minute to soak in.) So let me recap. No Hotmail. No Facebook. 2 hours from home. Watching a 2yr old and 9 month old on a hospital playground. Trying desperately to wrap my head around what has just happened.
I hang up with DH and call my more tech-intelligent sis back. She tries to get through as much as she can with Hotmail but I need to be at home to get my computer’s IP address. Meanwhile the texts and random phone calls are beginning to pour in. Turns out “I” sent an email to all of my contacts saying that I was mugged in the UK and needed money to get home. (Also turns out I lost my sense of proper grammar and began speaking the Queen’s English!)
So now I’m trying to explain to people from my contact list that I have not talked to in years that I am fine and merely the victim of an email hacker. And my husband is at home getting phone calls from friends and relatives calling to make sure everything is OK. Well, as OK as it can be. Fortunately my FB friends were smart enough to realize that since I had just posted the day before how I was on the beach in Wildwood, I probably wasn’t freaking out in the UK trying to get money wired before my flight left.
It took almost 2 weeks to get everything straightened out. I had to create a new email account (thank God I didn’t choose gmail, huh?). Created a FB account for my husband (who is sooo anti-FB) so I could keep in touch with my Tot Time Moms. Changed every password I could think of (talk about headaches!). My husband lost 2 days of work trying to go through all this email recovery stuff with me.
So, gmailers, go ahead and freak out. (Read this. It’ll at least make you laugh!) Then realize it’s not the end of the world. You will survive. I did.
making life simple again 