The Time I Got Hacked

Let me walk you through one of the most chaotic mornings of my life.

***

I woke up to a message that my friend’s dog was missing. She had gotten out of her collar and was wandering somewhere around the neighborhood between the kennel and my house. I said I’d keep an eye out for her. I left my room and said good morning to the other two dogs I had been watching. I went to open the front door for them so they could go pee—and who did I see standing in the yard with a giant smile on her face, but that aforementioned missing dog.

I didn’t have my contacts in, so I could barely make her out, but the blurry blonde shape had folded-over ears that were flopping as she ran around, so I figured that had to be her.

I closed the door, let the dogs play, and got ready for the morning, knowing that whatever was coming next, at the very least, I needed to see. Minutes later, eyesight restored thanks to my contacts, I went outside to try and grab the dog.

We had a very thrilling game of tag right at six in the morning, only I was always “it.”

I gave up on trying to grab her. I went inside and made coffee, gathered my lunch together, and prepared the other dogs’ breakfast. I left the front door open, thinking, hey, maybe she’ll just run inside because she still wants to play tag.

And would you believe that she fell right for my trap, and somehow, juggling bowls of dog food and three very food-motivated dogs, I was able to shut her in the house, keep the other two dogs outside, feed them, get them on the chain, and start my car so I could head out to work.

Then my phone started blowing up.

First, an Instagram message. That was weird. I use Instagram the most, but I barely message on it.

Then, a text from a friend of mine that just said “Hello!”. I responded, “hi!”.

My Instagram inbox started blowing up, so I opened the app and saw that, for some reason, a story I posted from January was currently up. It was taken at the Yakutat airport where I had done some work waiting for a plane.

Huh, I thought, that was really weird.

I opened the messages, and I knew that my morning was about to be one hundred times more complicated than wrangling three dogs.

As I scrolled down, I saw that someone had messaged every single person I followed with the following message:

“Hey text me I want to ask you for a favor if you can’t [sad face emoji] you should have my number [old number here].”

Holy shit, I thought, and then I looked at the clock in the car and thought, I can’t deal with this until I get to work. So, I drove to the office and tried very hard not to panic for the ten-minute drive.

Once I got in my building, I went to work.

***

Instagram allows you to see what devices are logged onto your account. So that was how I knew a random person from New York (or at least, their VPN was in New York) was currently messaging everyone. Instagram also allows you to kick a device off your account. So I did, and then got to work on changing my passwords. This random person and I had a fun log-in-log-off dance until I got my password changed and had my two-factor authentication updated.

And then I started getting Facebook messages.

You know how you can connect your Instagram and Facebook since they’re both under Meta? Yeah, I don’t recommend it. Why? Because if someone hacks your Instagram, guess what? They can very easily jump over to Facebook and then start messaging every single friend you’ve ever had!

I posted a story on Instagram and a status and a story on Facebook to let people know I was hacked and to not respond. This random person deleted my status and my story and, again, for some reason, put up the Yakutat image again. So then I worked on kicking them off my Facebook and updating my account security. And reposting that I was hacked.

It took a few tries, and then, about thirty minutes after the hack started, I kicked this random person off every account.

***

Guess how they got in.

If you guessed “they used your old phone number that hasn’t been yours since 2020 but for some reason you kept connected to your social media accounts,” you would be correct and also scarily psychic.

So I deleted that phone number off my accounts, and then got to spend the rest of my day responding to messages. Seventy-five messages, spanning texts, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. I had people call me. I had to call my mother so she wouldn’t fall for it. Seventy-five people, though, replied to “me” asking for help.

Though that morning was extremely stressful, I realized I have a community.

***

What does it mean to be in community? I think this question has come up a lot in social media discourse. Lots of content about what it means to be a “villager” and to create a “village”. About how community takes work, and that, along those lines, “everyone wants to be in a village but no one wants to be a villager.” Which is an interesting concept because without being “villagers”, our existence as a species would not have made it very far.

I could wax very anthropological about this, but I think I want to tell you about a time when my community, “my village” so to speak, showed up for me. I was at home this spring with my parents while my mother recovered from shoulder surgery. My father has advanced-stage Parkinson’s and cannot be left alone at home. So, I was taking care of both my parents, and for a few days, this was going fine.

My mother’s legs ballooned, and we were worried about a blood clot. Her surgeon told her to go to urgent care and get an ultrasound. All fine and good, except the urgent care was a twenty-minute drive away and we couldn’t leave my father alone at the house. I asked my mother if her friends, who had been coming to watch him, were available that afternoon. They all had prior commitments. I asked my sister if she had friends nearby, but she didn’t.

I had friends who lived over an hour away. I thought, I couldn’t ask them to come here. That would be too much. That would be asking a lot from them. But as the time clicked closer to my mother’s appointment, and her legs were hurting her, I decided just to ask. If they couldn’t come, then they couldn’t come.

And in fact, I expected them not to come. It was the middle of the day on a Tuesday. My friends all had jobs. They probably had other things to do in general than drive over an hour to sit for an hour at my parents’ house and then drive back.

But maybe I was thinking too little of my friends, because I sent the text to the group chat, and a few hours later, my friend and her partner showed up at my parents’ house, and I took my mother to her appointment.

People show up if you give them the opportunity. Friendships are strengthened by favors. Community is built one ask at a time. No one knows if you need help if you don’t tell them.

Give people the chance to show up for you. I’ve learned they generally will.

***

Of those seventy-five people, some of them I hadn’t spoken to in years. Some of them, our last message was a fight. Some of them were people I talked to every day. And yet, despite how close, or not, we were, they still took the time to respond to a message that was very obviously a hack. Because they were concerned that I did need help. That I was reaching out and asking for a favor. Or because they knew I was hacked and wanted to make sure I was aware.

I had people who texted my old number, and if they did, that random person would write: “hey, I was going to ask you if you can’t lend me $100 until tomorrow morning I’ll give you extra if anything I know it’s a big favor (sad face emoji) if you can’t no problem.”

At that point, I think almost everyone knew it was a scam, and I would like to think I do not text like that. But I did have one friend who sent the money to a fake Venmo. Luckily, they got their money back.

***

What did I learn from being hacked?

Well, for one thing, remove old phone numbers from your accounts, and if you receive a run-on message from someone out of the blue, it is more than likely a scam.

And it doesn’t hurt to text that person or follow up with a “hey, what happened” or “I think you’ve been hacked” message. Not just so they know (to be honest, they probably know about 2 seconds after the hack started), but because it’s a way to check in, to connect, to remind someone that you’re there for them.

I feel fortunate to have seventy-five people care enough about me that they reached out, in some way or another, to make sure I was okay. Even if I can no longer message on Facebook now, being hacked was (barely) worth it. I have a community, and help is just one message away.