JoJosReef
There's some lovely filth down here!
I was reticent to post this, but the horror of what I am currently going through has given me cause to put out a PSA to remind everyone to be vigilant and protect themselves.
I am currently a victim of full-on identity theft due to some unknown data breach or hacker's activities. While the exact data breach is unknown, I have been able to gather some most-likely scenarios from a computer crimes professional, as well as discussion with the local police. The most likely cause of the identity theft, that we know so far, is from a non-R2R giveaway that I participated in that was managed/hosted by sweepwidget.com.
PAUSE: I want to stop and personally thank @revhtree and all of the mods at R2R for giving us a safe and secure place for their amazing giveaways!
UNPAUSE: An alarming discovery was that an online app was associated with my gmail account that gave access to sweepwidget.com (and only sweepwidget). The app was called G Suite Migration, and this is what it does:
There is no reason why sweepwidget.com should have this type of account access, and I have no idea how this tool became associated with my account, as I'm usually hyper-cautious about clicking or saying OK to ANYTHING. Maybe I got caught up in the giveaway moment, I don't know.
What the computer crimes professional said is that this tool may have been accessed through hackers to download all of my gmail history--all emails and everything going back to inception. He also said that it is unlikely to be some nefarious use by sweepwidget themselves and that they may not even know about any hackers.
I recommend that anyone with a gmail account periodically check their security settings and make sure there are no apps/tools like G Suite Migration giving other websites unfettered access to their personal information.
To do this, click on your icon:
Manage your account:
Manage your data and privacy:
And you may see an app or list of apps/tools showing up here (I have none because I already removed G Suite Migration):
If you have another type of account like yahoo, best to find out how to check/monitor that, too.
I just thought I would warn everyone to be vigilant. I don't want this post to be read as an accusation to any giveaway or company (although I mentioned sweepwidget so you know what to look for in case you have it too). I love giveaways. Everyone loves giveaways. We just have to be careful that we don't become victims. So far, I've had to change and/or freeze all of my financials and credit. The perpetrators didn't stop there and have been trying to change the login information on my facebook account I deactivated over a decade ago (also why we highly suspect they have all of my email history). Just today I seemingly randomly had an IKEA Loyalty Card added to my google wallet. And they are trying to gain access to my local community's Facebook Groups, which fortunately has been flagged by our administrator--we can only assume they are trying to get access and information on my neighbors or worse. The fact that they also may have access to all of my photos and other personal information has led us to contact our schools to warn them against anyone trying to impersonate me or make changes to who is approved for pick-up of our children, and I am putting out alerts to local govt, mortgage and title company to protect our home from title fraud.
I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
I am currently a victim of full-on identity theft due to some unknown data breach or hacker's activities. While the exact data breach is unknown, I have been able to gather some most-likely scenarios from a computer crimes professional, as well as discussion with the local police. The most likely cause of the identity theft, that we know so far, is from a non-R2R giveaway that I participated in that was managed/hosted by sweepwidget.com.
PAUSE: I want to stop and personally thank @revhtree and all of the mods at R2R for giving us a safe and secure place for their amazing giveaways!
UNPAUSE: An alarming discovery was that an online app was associated with my gmail account that gave access to sweepwidget.com (and only sweepwidget). The app was called G Suite Migration, and this is what it does:
There is no reason why sweepwidget.com should have this type of account access, and I have no idea how this tool became associated with my account, as I'm usually hyper-cautious about clicking or saying OK to ANYTHING. Maybe I got caught up in the giveaway moment, I don't know.
What the computer crimes professional said is that this tool may have been accessed through hackers to download all of my gmail history--all emails and everything going back to inception. He also said that it is unlikely to be some nefarious use by sweepwidget themselves and that they may not even know about any hackers.
I recommend that anyone with a gmail account periodically check their security settings and make sure there are no apps/tools like G Suite Migration giving other websites unfettered access to their personal information.
To do this, click on your icon:
Manage your account:
Manage your data and privacy:
And you may see an app or list of apps/tools showing up here (I have none because I already removed G Suite Migration):
If you have another type of account like yahoo, best to find out how to check/monitor that, too.
I just thought I would warn everyone to be vigilant. I don't want this post to be read as an accusation to any giveaway or company (although I mentioned sweepwidget so you know what to look for in case you have it too). I love giveaways. Everyone loves giveaways. We just have to be careful that we don't become victims. So far, I've had to change and/or freeze all of my financials and credit. The perpetrators didn't stop there and have been trying to change the login information on my facebook account I deactivated over a decade ago (also why we highly suspect they have all of my email history). Just today I seemingly randomly had an IKEA Loyalty Card added to my google wallet. And they are trying to gain access to my local community's Facebook Groups, which fortunately has been flagged by our administrator--we can only assume they are trying to get access and information on my neighbors or worse. The fact that they also may have access to all of my photos and other personal information has led us to contact our schools to warn them against anyone trying to impersonate me or make changes to who is approved for pick-up of our children, and I am putting out alerts to local govt, mortgage and title company to protect our home from title fraud.
I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
