I should be on the Google pay­roll as an evan­ge­list. I always say that at speak­ing engage­ments and today more firmly than ever I am con­vinced that Google just flat out rocks. They were very effi­cient and effec­tive today when my gmail account was compromised.

Sheepa is 17, or 82 in human years. As his life winds down and he sleeps more and per­haps eats less, I thought it pru­dent to take him to the vet for a blood panel to see if his kid­neys or thy­roid are to blame. Now nor­mally you can’t get me out of the house early on a week­end morn­ing but the clinic was kind to offer me a last minute appoint­ment yes­ter­day for this morn­ing, at 8:30am. I set my Black­berry to turn on at the time I needed to get up, and as email fil­tered in I checked it.

I looked around and ensured myself  I was in my own home, I didn’t send this email at 5:30am yet it came from my account:

Hello!
I’m sorry I didn’t inform you about my trav­el­ing… am presently in Lon­don, on short vaca­tion and as i write to you now.. its unbe­liev­able am stuck here,got  mugged at gun point on my way to the hotel and my money,credit cards, phone and other valu­able things were taken off me at gun point, thank­ing Almighty God for save keep­ing my pass­port., i really need your urgent assis­tance quickly ? I JUST NEED SOME FEW HUNDREDS $$$ TO SORT OUT MY HOTEL BILLS AND i promise to refund it back to you once i get home cause i still have some cash in my account but i cant access any here right now ‚already can­celed all my cards imme­di­ately after the mug­gers took my things off me!!!  still at the pub­lic inter­net library where am mak­ing use of the free inter­net access,  i will for­ever be grate­ful  if you can help me,Waiting to hear from you quickly cos my flight leaves in few hrs but need to  sort the hotel bills and please me from been embar­rassed.
Thanks,

I don’t posses that level of Eng­lish gram­mar either, some­thing was phishy.….…  As the min­utes passed and peo­ple were  check­ing their email I was flooded with inquiries via text, phone, Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn and Skype ask­ing if I was OK.

My friends and con­tacts around the world (lit­er­ally) deserve hugs and grat­i­tude for being there for me. As incon­ve­nient and frus­trat­ing as this lit­tle ter­ror ses­sion was, it was very com­fort­ing and mean­ing­ful to me to know that not just one but sev­eral tens of friends (many I have never met in per­son) would have helped me had I truly needed it. My friends in the UK would  have come to my aid in person.

I tried to log into my email account and couldn’t. It didn’t rec­og­nize my pass­word. My email account was com­pro­mised. Some­one had fig­ured out the pass­word, changed it  and was using it the account to try to scam my con­tacts for any­where from $850 — 1,500.  Sheepa was going to be late for his appointment…

As we drove to the clinic I talked to Sheepa about the beauty and pit­falls of tech­nol­ogy. I also con­veyed my thoughts on how as des­per­ate or poor a per­son might be , tak­ing advan­tage of oth­ers just doesn’t cut it. He acknowl­edged each thought with a soft meow. He’s the last of the Cozumel res­cue cats to share my home.

Back at home, hon­orary Spe­cial Agent, Mike Van­Der­vort, was chat­ting with the hacker. He let me know. I was out­raged. I asked what he said. He was get­ting the same pity plea about being mugged and stuck in Lon­don. I decided I wanted to talk to him too. I logged in to another account; our chat was rather unpleas­ant. He wanted a ran­som for lib­er­at­ing my account. I was hav­ing none of it. He ended the chat rather all of a sud­den, just as I was warm­ing up with ver­bal karate.

I sat there with a numb left arm. He was hav­ing fun at my expense. He wanted to rip off my friends. He wanted to rip me off too. All the while I was work­ing with Google tech sup­port to resolve the sit­u­a­tion. They didn’t let me down. After a strin­gent and thor­ough exer­cise in prov­ing I was the right­ful account holder, they booted the buf­foon out and sent me a reset link to an alter­nate account to get back in. I’m still crazy about them. I don’t care if they spy on my bath­room habits, I’m all theirs.

I spent the next few hours answer­ing all the var­i­ous mes­sages in the var­i­ous forms they arrived to let my friends know it was over… The mis­sion was accom­plished and the the account was recov­ered. I reminded them to change their pass­words and to make them com­plex and chal­leng­ing to hack. Now go on, you do it too.

Hey, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend?
Peo­ple can be so cold.
They’ll hurt you and desert you.
Well they’ll take your soul if you let them.
Oh yeah, but don’t you let them.
You just call out my name and you know wher­ever I am
I’ll come run­ning to see you again.
Oh babe, don’t you know that,
Win­ter Spring sum­mer or fall,
Hey now, all you’ve got to do is call.
Lord, I’ll be there, yes I will.
You’ve got a friend.
~ James Tay­lor You’ve Got A Friend