Fascinating thing about blogging and social media… you find yourself invested in the lives of perfect strangers. People you would otherwise have never said more than a few words to, become a sort of pseudo-family and just like family, when time passes without hearing from them, well, you send a search party….
After going for a bit without seeing the ZESA Diaries, which chronicle the #NoZESA life in Zimbabwe (i.e. electricity blues) as tweeted by Bold Colours who a few years back achieved a certain notoriety for waking up to bake scones at 3AM (had a chat about that on Coffee With 3AM Scones) and not to mention the periodic reminders that I should finish writing my book… I thought, hey, let me check why so silent?
Imagine my shock to find that they had become a Cryptocurrency Dealer with an anime avatar:
Naturally, I reached out to them to find out when they started dabbling in crypto, forex and digital assets. It turns out their account got hacked and they were locked out.
"I think I liked one tweet on Team Fulo and then I remember being taken to a crypto currency advertisement. I think thats how I got hacked. They quickly accessed my hotmail account and then changed my password. So when I tried to log into my Twitter account, I couldnt get in, I was locked out completely. Tried saying Forgot Password and Twitter asked for my recovery email and couldn't get into that too, they had put in their own email. Had to report the account as hacked but then Twitter takes ages to act now. Imagine, they had sent me an email saying: Someone changed your password on Twitter is that you?. By the time I replied, it was already too late, the hacker had accessed my account. That’s a weakness in their system. Maybe those alerts should be sent to one’s phone not email addresses cause who walks around opening emails every now and again? Otherwise I am doing fine, I was initially traumatised and shocked the whole week. But now I am having more time on my hands to focus on other important things in my life. For 8 years I had diligently sent out my Zesadiaries highlighting the plight of the POVO’s struggles of having nozesa. Not everyone can go solar. What about the poor?
She does not know when she will recover her account, if it all and has not yet decided on creating a new account and all the associated hassle, new email, new phone number and passwords. So maybe this is goodbye.
“Oh what a hassle! May never do it who needs to entertain people for free? 8 years was too long. Maybe I should just draw down the curtain and call it au revoir!”
I had permission to share her experience and also to tell others who might be equally concerned as to her “disappearance” from the Twitter streets.
~B
PS Sometimes being hacked is as simple as clicking on a malicious link, stay safe on those digital streets.
Have you ever been hacked? How do you stay safe?
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?