Hijacked!

By Elaine Viets

Monday I woke up and discovered I was selling Viagra all over the Internet.

My address book had been hijacked. My mailbox was crammed with more than 100 emails from people who were sympathic, amused, even outraged.

Friend and TLC back blogger Tom Barclay wrote, "Sorry to bear bad news, Elaine. Got something from your AOL address this morning that clearly was not from you. It contained a link I wasn't about to follow, and seemed to be copied to everyone in your mailbox. I bounced it back so you can see the link. DON'T click it."

I emailed Tom: "Yep, they got me. I've changed my password. I'm now off to the santeria store to buy a curse for the @#$% who did this. Apologies to you for the inconvenience. No chickens will be harmed in the creation of the curse."

For three days I fielded emails. Most people, like Mary, were understanding. "We've all been there, darlin' " she said. "Let me know how that curse works out. If you make it something physically specific we can all keep a lookout for the soon-to-be-party-favor."

One woman was rather snippy about the spam. A gentleman rushed to assure me that he didn't need Viagra.

My agent, who's put up with me for more than a decade, wrote, "Hey, no need to apologize. I got some great drugs."

Some used the spam attack as a chance to get back in touch.

A retired newspaper colleague wrote: "At first I thought, 'Oh good, a message from Elaine.' Then I read it and thought, 'Well, Elaine must have decided that I'm a lonely old lady and need a little help.' "

But she'd had her own problems with hijackers. "Once I had someone send messages to everyone on my address list that I was stranded in London and someone had stolen my purse at gunpoint and I needed money to get home. Omigosh, people were calling me from all over the country asking, 'Are you OK?'

"Too bad clever people like that don't use their brainpower for good instead of evil."

Sandra wrote, "I always love to hear from you and of course read all your books, but this appeared in my mailbox and I thought it was strange. This was just a web address . . . Guess what I'm trying to say is either someone has invaded your email list or please introduce an unknown website so I know it is safe."

Some well-meaning souls sent me freebie sites that would scan the computer and remove the pests.

I tried two. Both of these free scans turned up more pests than a Florida flophouse – then they wanted $39.99 to exterminate them.

No, thank you.

If this was a virus, there's a lot of it going around. I could fill this blog with the names of people who've had their email addresses hacked recently. My Webroot Internet Security software had been driving me crazy blocking everything until I could hardly move around the Internet. I started over-riding the Webroot blocks.

That's how I let in the hijacker.

Yesterday, I emailed Webroot's support center that my computer had a virus.

Webroot's Mike B. emailed back, "If your email is sending out spam messages to other people in your inbox, that means it's been hijacked and someone knows your password to get into your email."