june potpourri

Cell Phone Woes

Good Morning, my name is Angela, and I was hacked. Are you ready for this crazy story?

Evidently, lucky for me and crucial to the story, I signed up for online email notifications for any changes to my Sprint.com account. So last week, I was first tipped off that something wasn't right when I got two email notices, the first saying "a new user has been added to your account" and second, "services were added to your account." Um, weird? I thought, and I looked into it online - immediately. I guess I'm lucky I wasn't doing anything.

A couple things stood out: my "device" had been changed. Sprint.com shows my phone, a Samsung Moment, as being my phone attached to my phone number. But, all of a sudden it wasn't the Moment but was some other Samsung flip phone. Then, I found a link to view "access to my account" and saw there were two users, myself and someone else with a username of "lilgjhwyxz" or something. You get the idea. Bogus. And then, the icing on the cake: International calling for $4 a month had been added to my plan.

Within the hour, my phone didn't work. I couldn't make calls. For some reason, my Internet stream was still working and I was getting emails and such. But my phone number was technically gone, I guess.

Basically, someone either had my phone number or account number and guessed my PIN was "123456" (it was) and was granted access to my account. They deleted my device, added their device, added international calling, and then the calling possibilities were endless. They hijacked my very phone number!

I did an online chat with Sprint customer service and we got it all taken care of. The Sprint person had to get the serial number off the back of my phone to reattach my physical phone device back to my account. I deleted the other user, they took International calling off, and things were back to normal.

I was encouraged to call the Fraud Department and report the incident, and I did. The guy there told me that what happens is when these hackers add a new device to your account, the computer is tricked and downloads "programming information" related to your account to the new fake phone. THEN, they quickly reinstall your device, so you don't really know what hit you. Then, they take that "programming information" and put it on multiple phones. So, all of a sudden, there are 10 phones out there all with my phone number, all making international calls. Sprint doesn't even know it's happened until the bill cycle ends and it all registers. Yikes! Luckily for me, I caught it in time. They actually didn't make any international calls.

It's pretty scary that the hackers didn't need my Sprint.com username and password (which are pretty secure), but instead just needed my phone number or account number (they could have just randomly put digits together to see what happened), and a generic PIN of 123456. (My own stupid fault I hadn't changed my PIN to something better!!) With just that, they gained access to my account. Needless to say my username, password, PIN, Security question, and voicemail passcode are all changed.

Insanity! I haven't heard of this happening to anyone else I know. Have you guys?? CRAZY!

Vacation

If any of you are wondering why I haven't been commenting on your blog (especially those of you with private blogs), it's because I'm way behind. As always. But I am going on vacation next week -- yeah! -- and one of my goals is to read everyone's blogs. Get all caught up. I actually wrote that down. Some more things I'm looking forward to doing:

• Read The Red Thread by Ann Hood (recommended by a friend)
• Organize my recipes (is it weird I'm traveling 500 miles and taking a huge binder of unorganized recipes??)
• "Archive" some recent Young Women activities for posterity (and in general get all sorts of Young Women responsibilities out of the way!)
• Finish the July ward newsletter (gosh I do a lot for Church huh?)
• Read the last 3 months' worth of Ensigns (I guess blogs aren't all I'm behind on, eh?)
• Organize my digital photos for printing
• Do some family history

We're going to a cabin near Idaho Falls to hang with Shane's family. Hopefully there will be fun and sun and water and happiness and relaxation. I can't wait.

Wesley Videos

For the Grandmas... some cute recent Wesley action.



Hahahahahaha!!!



One of his first words.... he knows he loves cookies!