"As we journey through life, unexpected challenges often test the depths of our resilience and unveil the intricate dance between reason and fear." ~Chat GPT (when asked to summarize this blog)
So this is where I recently found myself. I never ever imagined anything like this would happen to me. Precious. Me. I would judge those on FB who would come up for air with a new account or a revived account, and announce they’d been hacked. What fools!! I could see a hacker coming from a mile away. Oh really? Well the confluence of events, energetic and in physicality, conflooooed, or converged to create the perfect storm and I found myself entangled in a web of deception and fear that shook me to my core. The following is how it went down.
It was a busy day for me, this particular Wednesday. I had an important meeting related to guardianship for my son in the morning then had planned to groove on out to Sturbridge and meet my mom for an early Mother’s Day lunch. I glanced at my phone before going into the guardianship meeting and saw a rather bracing notification in Facebook indicating my account may have been compromised. Shot to the heart! But I knew I couldn’t go down into that black hole before a meeting, or I’d never come out. I noted it and did the meeting. It was such a drag to remember I had to deal with this FB issue b/c after the meeting, since I only had a lil bit of time before running out the door to meet Mom.
I did what we all do when looking for solutions. (And hush ya mouth if you are all, “I don’t do that”)…I googled. The first hit was FB customer service. I dialed it up. Of course, it made perfect sense that FB would be first!! FB is every fecken where! And they had a number!! I didn’t even think twice. I jumped in with both feet. Of course, FB would be ready to help me, after all, they practically run the world!! I called and someone answered right away! Even more proof I was right. FB was doing a great job with their customer service. It was uplifting and I really believed it. The dude on the phone introduced himself as “David Bell” even though he had a distinctly foreign accent. I know how it works in call centers. I was like, “of course he’s in a call center somewhere else, I deal with this all the time”…and David proceeded to listen to me as I poured out my concerns. I had to get this done asap. I could not have my FB hacked! He reassured me that he could help and that he understood the emergency and if I could give him my FB log in, he’d be able to see the hacker from his location and connections and be able to see what we could do to stop this. I bought it. Hook. Line. And Sinker.
Purdy soon I’d given him access to my phone through an app he’d had me download. I mean I didn’t even question it now! I was like, well, FB has the most amazing customer service! Of course they do! They have to! They are like the biggest entity in the world. I will be ok! And I handed it over. And we logged in and out of my credit card and my bank account, trying desperately and quickly to purchase gift cards so we could somehow track the activity of the hacker. He told me he could see some of what she was doing and she was sending texts and emails to all my family and friends in an attempt to ask for money and loans. I was then like, I’ll do anything, ANYTHING to stop the bleeding. I could not lose face! I’d been through all kindsa shit in my family and wasn’t exactly the most respected girly girl. I felt shame move on in and I was ready to stop this hacker fucker.
Mr. Bell had had me keep trying to get gift cards at different locations. Eventually he realized they were not getting approved b/c I didn’t have much $$ in any of my accounts…so, he told me I’d need to do something really important. This was a big deal and if we could stop this hacker, I’d have helped FB so much!! I was like, let’s go. He told me to verify me, because the other methods he’d had me try to verify (buy gift cards) hadn’t been fruitful, I’d need to drive to a local Walmart Supercenter and get some Apple gift cards. He explained that FB and Apple had a relationship and a plan for situations like this….some sort of way to double team hackers. Again. I bought it. (I know, it's ok to judge me for my lack of discretion. I'm editing this rk and like holy eff, how could she?)
At this point, he was all up in my phone, and I was in my car driving to Walmart. He was giving me compliments on my ability to stay calm. He said most people freak out, why wasn’t I freaking out? I may or may not have mentioned a few life details about my kids and the chaos and the need for peace no matter what was happening. Everything will be ok.
I was in a trauma response. I remember the way the trees were blowing in the gentle rain, early May, beautiful back roads all the way to the Supercenter. He told me to let him know when I was there, he’d gotten booted out of the app. I panicked!! I couldn’t lose this connection to the recovery of my precious sacred FB account!! I got a Spam Call right after he cut out that I assumed was him. Of course it was!! I picked up and there he was. I remember thinking that it was weird that it came up as spam but again, I kept ramming forward, no questions asked!! (yes I'm using lots of exclamation points, duh!)
I continued to white knuckle it through the back roads and country routes until I got to Walmart Supercenter. I quickly got settled in a spot. He gave me step by step instructions on how to go into the Walmart, where to look, what to look for and explicitly explained that I did not want or need to talk to the clerk. Again, weird. But I was on a friggin’ mission. I was floating, I was praying, I was still deep in a fugue state.. trauma response and I was on task. I got the cards, I did have to ask a minor question to make sure the money was on them, and I was back to my car.
Before we started with the Apple Cards, he made a point to compliment me on how great I was doing, helping FB. They had all day to help me recover my account!! I was blown away. Next, he had me put Cash App on my phone, just to test something out. He stared to explain it to me, the purpose of this, but I was kind of like let’s just get it done. Pretty soon, I was sending cash transfers, in small dollar amounts, out of my account. I can’t remember the details of why he said we were doing it but we kept doing it until I guess he thought we’d done enough and then he had me deal with the Apple Gift Cards. I was instructed to open them and take pictures of the front and back and scratch off the codes on both. And at some point he got my drivers license and who knows what else? I can barely type this it’s so horrific to remember.
Once he had the codes from the gift card, he told me I was done, I could drive home and he would call in 2 hours to confirm that they had stopped the hacker and an $800 deposit was in my bank account to cover the costs of the gift cards. I felt exhausted, relieved but weird. We disconnected and I drove home.
At this point, my mother had driven to my house after I’d had my partner let her know I was in the middle of a friggin’ hacking from the bowels of ‘ell!! I was not in the mood to chit chat and needed to go back and sit for a minute and talk to John. I had no idea how to even move through this. As I sat and shared what had been happening, it was like slowly coming out of a fugue state or something. I couldn’t let myself fully feel it, I was still holding on to hope, shreds, lil bits of an idea that maybe, somehow, I’d get the money in my account and my FB account back.
The hacker dude told me to call back in two hours if I hadn’t heard anything. I called back right at the two-hour mark. He picked right up and reassured me that I would have the money back in my account and I would get an email letting me know my account would be recovered but it wouldn’t be until the next morning. At this point, all the red flags were lit up like a freakin’ house on fire! I pretty much knew I’d been hacked. But I wanted to play along. I do not know why. So, I was cordial and did not let on to the fact I was pretty sure he was fuckin me hard.
John and I talked about all the things that happened during the hack. Including one MASSIVE TELL that almost broke through my fugue. When I was putting the cash app on my phone and setting up an account as he instructed me to do, I had to use my phone to capture my picture. He told me how pretty I was, or attractive. Not sure which words he used. It stood out b/c he’d said it before, when he saw my FB profile image. I brushed it off then, I was like, well they MUST BE training the FB customer service reps to be human and act like a human when they were actively hacking a woman, and probs any woman got these compliments. Wow. But he said it again, like I just mentioned, with the cash app loading. I felt weird. I almost texted something to my guy, but held back! I had to recover my goddamn account and not let the family name be brought into the lower bardos of shame, once again, because of ME.
Well, I was rattled, John was rattled. He encouraged me to start changing my passwords and freeze my credit and call my bank. I did just that. I started the long arduous task of changing passwords on all the accounts I could think of that might have been affected. I went on the credit reporting sites and froze my credit. It was slowing seeing into my consciousness that this had indeed happened, I was still in some altered state, trauma response and even now, a shred of me thought maybe , just maybe, Id’ miraculously find the money in my account the next morning.
Of course, that did not happen. Day dawned and I was back at it. On my computer, remembering the events of the previous day and letting the horror sink in. I did not have a fat 800 in my bank account. I still had Mr. Hacker’s number and shot him a text mentioning that he’d taken the money I was using to send to someone on a fixed income. I mentioned I was on a fixed income, and this was brutal. I do not even know why I thought this might help but it helped me process the days’ events. After texting him, I deleted and blocked the number.
I felt like I was in this weird ass energetic space of fog, of denial of grief of horror, anger and it was coming out as numb.
I moved through the day doing what I needed to do. Changing some appointments, reaching out to my friends and support network outside of FB. And did a lot of praying. I had to keep letting go. What if? What the feck if this was really true? That all my accounts were hacked, and I’d never get back my FB account? What if I could not access Meta and these accounts ever again? A cold chill went down my spine. I’d become dependent on support, comradery, insight, humor, collaboration, not to mention the connections! 15 years of connections, work, hard work, building a podcast, finding guests, starting a business, building what I thought was something of value. Even in the downtimes when I wasn’t super active, I was always thinking forward about how to use FB productively and consciously. I had been involved in many groups and had built my network slowly, deliberately and steadily over these past 15 years. There were so many people I’d met, connected with and built friendships and collaborations that I basically only knew through FB. Some I’d met in person, some I’d interviewed, some I’d messaged, some I’d been in groups with and gained much knowledge from. It was a loss, a bigass loss. One I am still “processing” …
The bank said we’ll cover you in the form of a loan til we investigate this. Phew. I just kept praying and doing the next thing in front of me. John kept suggesting I call Apple support about the gift cards I’d been coerced into purchasing. Maybe they could help and maybe they needed to know about this kind of deception! I kept thinking, what does it matter? Id’ given the hackers soooo much. The codes from the back of the cards!! Like the biggest “no no” ever!! I did not want to call, I thought it would be a waste of time, but I also know John does know a thing or two about this sort of thing.
I called Apple customer service, got to a rep and laid out my story of what happened. Astonishingly enough, this woman seemed to think she could help me. She could at least see if the money was still on the cards. I couldn’t believe it! I’d by some stroke of intuition in the middle of the dark tunnel of exploitation I’d fallen into, had saved everything. The packaging, the receipts, the cards, yadda. Over the course of the next hour and a half, the Apple rep helped me. By the time we got off the call, I had confirmed that the money had not yet been spent and we’d caught it in time, and I’d be getting a check for $800 in the mail in the next 4-6 weeks. Holy moly. A++++ for Apple customer service!!
Breathing a sigh of relief, I now had to figure out how to recover my accounts. I was still confident that this was a possibility. I went through the process of reporting my account hacked and uploading my ID. I also did some googling. To see if FB really did indeed have customer service via the phone. This is where the wheels started to come off my trust in social media. I discovered that no, fb does not do phone calls and basically has NO customer service other than following prompts and instructions online to report this sort of shenanigans. In fact, one of the first articles I read said that if FB was providing links to customer service at the top of a google search, it was a hack. Oiyyy. Gut punch.
I found a blog by a woman written a few years back that had had a similar situation. How the hackers had gotten a hold of her account, changed the Meta info, email and phone and no matter what she did, 2 factor authorization was hardwired to go to the hackers’ email.
I reported the hacker’s email and asked it be removed which sent me into another loop. I cannot tell you how much research I did and how hard I tried to find workarounds. Finally, I found the exact situation I was experienced summarized in a reddit post. Few had found any way out. I stared to accept that I might not get my FB account back for a long time. I started to feel into the idea that I was losing this entire ship. The Meta ship. It was dissolving. All the years and the work and the love and the connections up in smoke. I still had to distance myself from the full impact of this idea.
I also had to look at this sitch from a broader perspective. What was I meant to learn? Why oh why did my higher self-allow this event to show up in my now? Was I a dirty FB whore who needed punished? Had I lost my mind and become so doggedly focused on social media that I’d lost all touch with reality and now was being shamed and guilted and punished? These are all thoughts that ran through my mind as I began to pick of the pieces of this loss. Where would I put all my nature pics? Who was I without my loud and ever evolving expression on FB? Was it all a waste of time? Was I some selfish self-obsessed aging mother that shoulda been out doing other things besides being on social media? What did it all mean and matter? How could I move through this without heaping shame, blame and guilt on my shoulders? I did not know at this point. I knew that nothing is a waste, we are always showing ourselves what’s next and always teaching ourselves in every moment that we choose to reflect and tap into that very potent guidance.
Now it’s like a month post hack and here I am tryin’ ta write it up and wrap it up but I am finding that it’s still in my now. I used to get up every morning and look at my FB! I used to comment every day on people’s daily posts. I used to check the groups I was in regularly for new info and collective wisdom. I used to take risks and be bold and as authentic as possible and put my words, my observations from a helluva bandwidth of lived experience, my dances, my random pics and videos out there. Trusting the universe. That I was “doing the right thing” ….helping people feel more comfortable in their own skin. I was remembering myself how to be publicly comfortable in my own skin.
Skipping forward a few weeks, I keep trying to finish this blog. I just got my meta account back 3 days ago. I’ll tell you what. The thrill is gone. Done. Nada. I still can’t get on Facebook. It’s still in a reedonkulus loop. Every now and then I try again, go on reddit and look to see if there's any new solutions to this problem, but more and more, I just don't even care. I have Instagram and my FB biz page. And it is like I forgot how to post stuff, the sense of urgency and the addictive quality of it is gone! I have more space in my head and time and life for a new approach and new ideas. I can now see why God struck me down. Lol. In the form of a hacker....Who also gave me a gift of awareness, a shift in perception, a bird’s eye view of how absorbed I am, I dare say we all are, in the matrix of social media. There was a family member that was contacting me multiple times a day, all day every day and now this has stopped and we can communicate with better boundaries via email and phone. I no longer feel that clench in my stomach when I go to check my notifications. I’m being far more intentional with what I post. And like I said, I have room in me heeeed for some new ideas.
On that note, stay tuned for the new podcast I’m creating that grew out of this experience. I’m gonna call it “conversations with friends” and I’m going to have long form convos with people I got to know on FB that inspired me, to whom I felt some level of soul connection, and have a nice chat about our lives. I need to podcast anyway again since I teach it and do not want to lose touch with the rapid-fire pace of innovation in this field.
In conclusion, I learned a ton. And that is the end. Thanks for reading!
Reach out if you are interested in connecting, being on a podcast, creating a podcast, looking for podcasting resources and training.
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