Hack....

Ok for anyone who hasn't figured it out, the last few posts were becasue my email got hacked. My email account had a contact for direct posting to my blog. If you're wondering why it took me so long to take care of, it was some serious drama with Yahoo and AT&T. I had a very old email account with "sbcglobal.net" at the end. It was created way back when I had AT&T and joined it with my yahoo account. So when I needed to log on and change my password, it had locked me out because of the obvious spam mail my account was sending out. So I couldn't just log in and take care of it. I tried to reset my password but everytime I did it kept telling me I had to it through AT&T because it wasn't just a yahoo account. But AT&T kept telling me I didn't have an account with them and they couldn't help me. It was eternally frustrating and I had to make several phone calls to different deparments at AT&T, i'm quite sure I talked to at least three representatives in India, before finally ending up with someone in Kentucky, who besides speaking worse English than the people in India, was at least able to reset my password. Password was reset and then changed by me to the most secure kind of password possible (according to several websites) and all the emails were deleted. Here are a few things I have learned that may help anyone who's been hacked especially if they have a yahoo/att account

>If you have a junk mail account, (which is basically what this account was, it used to be my main account but I switched to a new one and left this one dormant) DELETE ALL OF YOUR CONTACTS. I didn't even think of this until my father suggested it to me but if I'm not going to be using that email there isn't any need for the contacts, that's where the hacking problem comes in. Hackers look for dormant email accounts that aren't used but still have contacts for them to forward spam and viruses.

>A secure password! I thought my previous password was secure, it was 8 letters, plus two numbers and a symbol, which used to be considered secure. According to my research a more secure password consists of both capital and NON capital letters, with numbers and or symbols intermixed with the letters.

>If you have an old sbcglobal account and have this problem here is the direct phone number to fix it: 1-800-579-7861

Sorry for anyone who got those spam emails my account was sending out, Like I said, I've got it taken care of, it won't be coming from my email again, and to all the hackers out there....WHY??! Seriously, why?