By Scott Robertson
I have little patience for celebrities, politicians and other public figures who say something on social media they wish they hadn’t, then say, “My account was hacked.”
The least believable “You want me to believe you were hacked? srsly?” moment happened a couple of weeks ago to an Oakland Raider named Aldon Smith.
Smith routinely posted videos from an account named “Ravenga” on a social site called Periscope. Recently a video of a man and a woman, neither of whose faces are seen, but who are both enjoying a home-rolled cigarette of some sort, was posted from the Ravenga account. The video was named, “Fire up session.”
At one point the woman tells the man he is, “hella stupid” for posting the video. He replies, in a voice that is, at worst, a sterling imitation of Aldon Smith, “They don’t know it’s me. It’s not like I put, ‘Aldon Smith.’”
Wow. Just wow.
The next day, Smith tweeted, “Nice try, not me.”
The NFL was unconvinced. Perhaps that’s because Smith was already serving a one-year suspension from the league for having previously failed a drug test. He entered rehab this week and we sincerely hope he gets his act together.
But if we take Smith’s entrance into rehab as a tacit admission that he was, in fact the dude so accurately described by the lady in the video, then this is the most obvious incident yet of a celebrity lying about having been hacked after self-publishing evidence of his own foolishness.
I tell you all that to tell you this.
I’ve been hacked.
My office email account was hacked this week by someone who used it to send emails to my contacts (and in some cases, my contacts’ contacts) with what appeared to be an article on wealth management attached. What amazed me was that the hacker was gutsy enough to argue with me, while pretending to be me, on my own email account.
It started just before 2 p.m. Monday. I got a text from someone I had not spoken with in more than a year, asking if I had sent him an email with a Google document attached. I had not. Within two minutes, the floodgates opened. I got more texts. I got emails. I got phone calls. Had I sent this email, they all asked. I had not.
When I opened my account, there was a notice that someone in another location was already using the account. When I clicked the notification, it gave me an unfamiliar IP address. When I looked it up, the address came up as the Holiday Inn in Nairobi, Kenya.
I looked up at the rapidly growing thread relating to the bogus message. The hacker had taken the opportunity while I was offline to start telling people, “YES, I DID SENT IT. THANKS.” The dude was on my account, at that moment, conning my friends. I quickly followed his message up with one of my own, saying, “No, I didn’t, and you know I use better grammar than that. Don’t open the attachment.” I started to copy that message and send it to all my contacts, but then I realized, there was a better way.
I changed my password.
Within a minute, the offending party was gone, relegated, I guess, to a Kenyan hotel room.
So to everyone who got the email, I apologize, but I was hacked. I will admit to one bit of foolishness though. I had been using the same password for years, and it wasn’t a particularly strong one. That, I admit, was hella stupid.
