To say we’re in difficult times would be an understatement. Taking heed of the advice from the medical and scientific experts will bring us through this crisis safely, and hopefully quickly. Use this time to take stock of where you are personally. When it’s over, are you where you want to be?
Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman. This was our first Caribbean beach, many, many, many years ago. We probably wouldn’t recognize the island if we returned.
I consider myself a reasonable smart person. But I did something pretty foolish with my primary email address this week.
My business runs on email . . . Vital . . .
When I have to delete my primary account for a couple of days . . . and I wasn’t sure I could get it back . . . that’s not good.
Here’s the story . . . so you can avoid my mistake.
I received an email from my credit card company asking if the recent charges were legitimate. Four of the five were. One for $1200 wasn’t.
First, I called the credit card company to cancel the card. Hopefully, this transaction was cancelled before the crooks got the tablet shipped to them.
The credit card company described a payment to PayPal. I have a PayPal account (PayPal is another story for a later day), so I checked to see if there was activity in my account. There was no activity.
Alert number one that something was wrong: Credit card payment to PayPal but no activity in my PayPal account.
I then noticed an email arrived from eBay with the description of the tablet and the eBay seller. Yet, when I checked my eBay account, there was no activity and no tablet transaction listed.
Alert number two that something was wrong: Email from “eBay” on transaction that was not in my eBay account. This is the spoof email. And email designed to look legitimate but containing nasty links and lurkers.
A smart person would have stopped at that point. But, not me. I clicked on the “view transaction” in the spoof email.
Once I clicked, I told the hackers they had a live fish on the hook. A good, valid, working email address. The email address they sent the spoof email to.
Within five minutes, my inbox was flooded. Probably 300 messages in 15-20 minutes.
The hackers took my email address and mass submitted registrations to hundreds of websites. A good number of them required “click to confirm your registration” links, so those will fall to the wayside. However, there appeared to be some that went straight through for registration.
I hope my wife understands I’m not looking for a Russian wife . . .
GoDaddy was excellent through most of this.
They had me delete my account for a couple of days. They counseled that likely the hackers would move on to some other foolish person (my description, not theirs!), once they realized I cancelled my account and they were receiving bounce backs.
After two days, I started the email address back up, and as they counseled, the hacker emails had stopped. I’m watching cautiously.
This may not apply to you, but if you’re using a hosting account for email, you might want to check with the company about their retention and retrieval process. GoDaddy keeps email on their server for 14 days, even if the email account is deleted.
Moral of the story. If you get word of a compromised credit card, and then get a “confirming” email from the online vendor (eBay, Amazon, PayPal), don’t walk into the trap like I did. Log in separately and check your accounts. If you can’t find activity, the alarms should go off!
Goals:
I prefer to show this beautiful setting . . . than an airplane landing in an airport!
Click here for more information on direct flights to Belize.
Quick post of information today! Many things to get to on my To Do list! And that’s what I’m writing about.
I have been looking for a solution to the scraps of paper on my desk and my scattered “To Do List’.
Sound familiar?
I used TaskWise for some time, but the company disintegrated before my eyes. The site is still up (and they may still be charging). But it doesn’t work and the company doesn’t respond for requests for assistance. Buyer Beware!
Next, I turned to downloading the Day Timer app on iTunes. The idea was to sync up my Outlook Tasks with my iPhone. It looked like it might work. And the first level, customer support was pretty good and responsive through email.
However, Day Timers’ second level support drops off pretty significantly. Never did hear back from Level Two, after 2-3 emails. Again, buyer beware.
Then I tried some “work arounds”. But ultimately, I didn’t think that Outlook Tasks had the flexibility I wanted.
Then I stumbled on Wunderlist. I strongly encourage you to check it out.
Desktop based, with apps for most smart phones.
It allows seamless syncing back and forth between your smart phone and your desk top.
Wunderlist provides some pretty helpful sorting features, so you can pull out your priority “To Dos”.
And it allows you to set up multiple lists. I have one for Personal, and others for the various businesses/projects I’m running.
There are some features that would be nice. Like, the window is too big on the computer screen–it would be nice to be able to resize it much smaller than the program allows.
It does most everything I need it to do. And the price is right–free!
Pick it up . . . and get yourself organized!
