Sorry for the Disruption

Last Thursday, someone hacked my Gmail/Google account by bypassing 2FA protections and shut me out for about a day before I got my account back. Google's account recovery options are dismal for most people - either use the automated recovery tool or tough luck, but all the hacker had to do was change my phone number, recovery email and other security parameters and that made that automated tool useless. Reddit was the ultimate savior, because others sharing this experience reported luck appealing to YouTube on X to get their account manually reviewed and rescued and I can confirm this worked when nothing else did.

With so much of our digital lives tied up in the ecosystem of either Apple, Microsoft, or Google, losing an account can be devastating. We were basically locked out of our home devices, banking info, cloud storage and files on Drive, Chat, Maps, 20 years of archived Gmail, and of course over 1900 passwords compromised (Chrome's password manager is NOT adequate protection). I have spent the last week locking down accounts and ended up investing in 1Password -- I normally hate password managers because they don't always work as well as they should, but this one seems okay for now. I am also moving to Authenticator codes wherever possible.

Things I have learned:

1. Get a password manager and do not rely on password "systems" you create to remember different passwords on different sites. All a hacker has to do is put a handful of them into AI and ask it to decipher your system, and it will with ruthless accuracy. Chrome/Google's Password Manager is not much help if someone gets into your Google account. Ours did not involve a stolen password, but more likely a cloned session, likely captured from code running on a rogue ad on a website that went unnoticed.

2. There needs to be more oversight into Google's security. I personally believe they are vulnerable to some sort of hack that overrides traditional 2FA systems because normally you get warned when anything unusual happens, like accessing things from a new device or unusual location. We got zero warnings. Not a single one. Our hacker seems to have been in Italy, but it could have been a VPN. Google's pervasive presence in our digital lives means there should be someone to talk to if an account gets compromised, and right now there isn't. That is crazy. The account recovery tool should not just accept that a hacker can change your security information while locking you out and only rely on the newest information. A recovery attempt should also be willing to utilize older information, especially factoring in the location of logins, historical use of devices, and other factors no hacker can fake. That did not happen for me.

3. Make sure you do fill in all those security protections on important accounts, even if it is a nuisance. It is a bigger nuisance recovering from a hack, with long term implications from someone accessing personal information that can be used later.

I've got most of my system back up and running normally after being thoroughly checked for any residual issues so the wire services should resume with items held running first. No notices were lost.