It's a strange feeling realizing that ten years of communication and connection can be taken over and made irrelevant.
For those who didn't see yesterday's post, my Twitter account was hacked, and the email address assigned to the person who hacked it. My attempts to contact Twitter about this have been answered thus far with:
"please respond with the email address associated with this account."
Well, I would if that address was still mine but alas, it is not, and really, I only have myself to blame.
So let's have a little chat about this tale of woe, what I should have done and how I'm going to move on with this.
For starters, my plan to have "mkltesthead" be a ubiquitous tag that was once and done now has run into a bit of a problem. Granted, "mkltesthead" is a bit arbitrary to begin with. I first came upon the idea when I wanted to name the TESTHEAD blog. I really wanted testhead as a Twitter handle and name to use but I couldn't get it as it had already been used. Thus the convention that started here spread out as a username in many places. During the pandemic, I admit that my Twitter participation was sporadic at best. I just wasn't in the mood to tweet, so I wasn't really paying attention to that account. Well, I paid attention yesterday, that's for sure, when I discovered I couldn't use it any longer!
To be clear, there are a couple things anyone who interacts with me should know:
First, I will not ask you for money, EVER! Granted, I may ask you to go over to Ensign Red's Bandcamp page and buy some music, but that's about it ;).
Second, why would I want to sell my account? For what purpose? Who else would benefit from being TESTHEAD?
Anyway, it's looking less and less likely that the account will be recoverable, so I have mentally prepared to move on. I have created a new account, and it looks like this:
Please note the new name. It's @TheTestHead. Seeing how easy it was to get that, I am a bit chagrined I never tried to change it to that before (LOL!).
In any event, I will tell you what I suggest everyone do and what I should have done:
- update your password regularly. Even if you think you have a wildly creative password no one else will figure out, you may be surprised how easily passwords can be cracked nowadays.
- do an audit and see what devices and apps have access to your account(s). The more avenues for data flow, the more likely you will be a victim of a breach.
- if you have been delaying setting up multi-factor authentication, do so now. Make sure that you create barriers to people taking over your stuff. It may feel like an annoyance but trust me, having your account lifted and having to explain to people "no, that's not me asking for money" is much more annoying.
One might think that a seasoned software tester should be well aware of stuff like this. Just because We should be aware doesn't necessarily mean we always follow our own advice or everyday practices. We can get lazy as well. This is just an example of how getting lazy can come back and bite us.
In short, learn from me ;).
