PCMag.Com - The phone rings. It’s your sweetheart, in tears. Why, oh why, did you change your status on Facebook to Single? Are you moving to Dubuque? Facebook says you live in Dubuque.
First things first; offer all necessary reassurance that you’re not breaking up and moving away. Then face the facts—you’ve been hacked.
The evidence might come out in other ways. Your friends may ask why you sent them that stupid email ad for Viagra. You may find one day that you simply can’t log in to your email or social media account. It’s an awful feeling, but you can recover.
How Did It Happen?
It’s conceivable that a cyber-criminal mastermind targeted you personally for a hack attack. A “spear-phishing” email message specially crafted using your personal information might have tricked you into connecting with a malicious site. Or perhaps an active hacker in some Moscow basement exploited a vulnerability in your OS.
Yes, these scenarios are conceivable, but they’re almost inexpressibly unlikely. You’re special, of course, but you’re not that special. It’s much more likely that you just weren’t careful, or weren’t lucky. Perhaps you logged in to your email from a public computer without taking proper precautions. Maybe you shared your password with a friend who’s turned out not to be such a friend after all. A valid website that’s been compromised by injected malware can infest your system with a data-stealing Trojan, and that doesn’t require any personal attention from cyber-spies. More
