Its a Hero

technology downfalls

Dear Crooked River Grill: You suck.

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Dear Crooked River Grill and Restaurant.com:

Get your crap together. Crooked River Grill {located in Munroe Falls, a suburb of Akron, Ohio}, we heard some pretty “ehh” things about you, but your menu looked pretty good, so we decided to give you a try, thanks to the folks over at Restaurant.com.

So on May 10th of this year, we purchased a $25 Restaurant.com gift certificate {for those who are unfamiliar with Restaurant.com, it’s a website where you pay discounted rates for restaurant gift certificates with an understanding that there is a minimum you must spend at the time of your visit} for $10. The certificate says you must purchase a minimum of $35 worth of food.

It can be difficult for the two of us to spend $35 in one dinner, but BF was excited about trying something he wouldn’t typically {a rack of ribs} and I was going to get the coconut shrimp.

We originally went to the shady place Crooked River Grill on Monday the 5th of July. We were so excited. But the parking lot was empty. It was pretty much the only restaurant in town that was closed for the holiday both Sunday and Monday. Such a bummer. So we went back this past Monday.

As we pulled in BF says to me, “Wouldn’t it suck if they wouldn’t take it?” And we laughed. And then we see a note on the door:

No longer accepting Restaurant.com certificates as of May 15th, 2010.

Immediately my brain was thinking of “going Target lady” on them, as we would refer. But BF, being the logical and level-headed one, decided that maybe we should ask. So we did. And it was true. And I got pissed and tweeted this:



The best is that the woman from Crooked River Grill said they had a disagreement with Restaurant.com and asked them to take it down and they didn’t. And we had just purchased it 5 days prior to the date on the sign.

And I checked today and it’s STILL up on Restaurant.com.


WTF.

And Restaurant.com still hasn’t responded to our WTF refund request.

WTF.

Lesson learned but it still pisses me off.

part three: an informative look at how to better secure your accounts.

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So needless to say, I learned a lot throughout this process. I thought I’d share so tips on how to avoid this happening to you:
1. Have both a primary email address and at least two back up email addresses.
2. Make sure you log in to the settings page of your email account to enter a back up email address. (Then SAVE it — make sure you do this as well as “Verify” the accounts via your back up email address).
Here’s how I have mine set up now:
Primary email address — uses secondary email address as a backup.
Secondary email address — uses a third email address as backup.
Third email address — uses primary email address as backup.
3. Enter in your cell phone number into your settings page. That way if/when any changes are made (legit or illegit), you will be notified, both via text and via backup emails. (and don’t forget to SAVE! & verify the phone number with a confirmation code).
4. Make sure you change your email passwords often. & make sure each of your email accounts has a unique password.
Some other helpful tips:
– Try not to keep your inbox full of items that might give away person information (ie. credit card bills, passwords, documents, online banking information, personal information). Back all of it up on an external hard drive. Imagine if this person did a little more research and found out that I planned on vacationing in Maine. If they had said I was stuck in Maine, chances are most would have believed it.
– Is your credit card information stored on google shopping? If so, imagine the damage that could be done if someone hacks your email. If your email is hacked, your EVERYTHING is hacked. Don’t rely on google for everything. What do I mean? Well, attached to my email are: my blog, my photo albums, my feed subscriptions (via google reader), my personal calendar, google documents (where a lot of my budgeting spreadsheets are), and my YouTube videos.
They had access to everything. Everything could have been gone. Luckily it wasn’t. But what an eye opener.
Please don’t let the same happen to you! Take steps to combat this! I think we all take for granted the fact that this place we know & love can be a pretty scary place.

part two: recovery mode.

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So while I was dealing with the anxiety of having been taken advantage of, I realized I had no idea how to move forward with the recovery process.



I filled out a form for “Can’t access your account?”

I chose “My account has been compromised,” and filled out an account recovery form.

I put in my recovery email address, filled out all the information and submitted the form.

Then, my backup (which is also my recovery email address) was compromised (aka-hijacked). So what exactly is a hijacked account? It’s when someone hacks your account and takes ownership by changing all of the password information.

This = major problems.

So the email address that was supposed to get emailed information to recover my primary email address was compromised as well.

I had no idea what to do. All of the searches we did told us we should not resubmit another account recovery form.

Finally I found out that it was safe to submit the form again. But,… in order to do this I had to create yet another backup email address so that my information could be sent there.

Yesterday morning I did this and recovered everything. Thankfully.

So thank you all for being so supportive and tryin to help me. Watch for tomorrows super informative post on how to avoid this happening to you!

part one: hijacked.

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Y’all.. this has been one. crazy. weekend.


Let me start by saying I’m sorry. I know a lot of you received an email from “me.”

It all started while I was at a birthday party on Saturday. I have my iPhone with me 24/7, so I had just checked my email. No big deal.
Then I get a phone call from my aunt. Weird. 

She says “Where are you?” 
I said, “Umm, Cleveland, Ohio. Why?” 
Aunt says, “Well, we just received an email from you, and assumed it was spam, but you might want to look into that.”

The email was this:

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,i came down here to London,England for a short vacation to visit a resort and got mugged at gun point last night at the park of the hotel where i lodged.All
cash,credit cards and cell were stolen off.I’ve been to the  embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all,Our  flight leaves today and I’m having problems settling the hotel bills.

The hotel manager won’t let us leave until i settle the hotel bills(1,000 GBP) now am freaked out.Please reply and let me if can you have the money wire to me through western union i promise to pay back as soon as i get back home.
Rachel

Obviously I was not in London. Let’s face it… I’m going to Maine in a month, and I cannot stop talking about it. You would think if I was taking a trip to, I dunno… let’s say LONDON, you all would know about it. Right? Right.

Then all of the calls came. Aunts, uncles, mother, father… texts from everyone. Tweets from people. Then I tried to log on to Facebook. No-go. Facebook hacked. Logged into my blog email (itsahero@gmail.com). No-go. Hijacked as well.

My life crumbled. I couldn’t tell everyone I was OK. Not to mention, my blog is controlled by my GMail.

I spent most of the weekend crying. I felt taken advantage of. I was exposed. Everything was completely out of my control.