There may be Good News for Bloggers and Citizen Journalists, but we still can’t let our guards down.  There will always be someone or something out there in the World Wide Web just waiting in the wings to make us crash and burn.

Since yesterday was Friday, I was up later than usual last night.  At about 1:00 AM, I was ready to hit the sack when I decided to check my phone for any late breaking messages.  Sure enough I got a tweet from one of my local peeps, Prem Lee Barbosa, who, to my good fortune, was also awake.

I read his tweet.  Panic ensued.

I understood the “changing password” thing, but the part about “seeing if any apps are authorized to post from my account…” started a sinking feeling in my stomach.  I realized at that point sleep was not in my immediate future.  I forced myself to clear my thoughts and focus on the task at hand.

This is not easy.  Especially at one o’clock in the morning.

Like so many of us info-slash-tech addicts, my days (and half my nights) are spent in a state of constant connectivity.  While I’m still half asleep I immediately turn on my computer in the morning before I shuffle out into the kitchen for my caffeine infusion.  By the time I come back with my first java jolt of the day, my desktop is open and I’m ready to catch up on whatever I’ve missed out on during the previous five or six hours.  The immediate in-my-face blast of information smacks the last vestiges of sleep coma out of me.  Unfortunately, the world does not sleep when I do, and well, We ARE the World, right?

But, once I shut down for the night, I try to turn off the world.  “Try” being the operative word here.

After I got Prem’s tweets last night, I took a few deep breaths and attempted to fix the problem from my phone since I had already turned my computer off for the night.  No such luck.  I couldn’t even figure out how to change the password from my phone.  Yes, there is a way to do this, but I was too panicked to screw around with the tiny screen.  I needed a full seventeen inches of monitor to view the exact scope of the disaster at hand and, depending on the type and number of “spam tweets” that had gone out, determine the level of damage control I would need to summon to fix the mess.

Luckily, the hacked tweets were innocuous phrases like, “That was funny! LMAO!”, “Did you write this?”, and “Love your blog!”

Think about this.  It could have been worse.  I could have been spam tweeting Anthony Weiner’s … um, ya know, right?  Now THAT would have been humiliating!

The spam tweets were followed by a link to what is obviously a site that, if clicked, also causes the tweetee’s account to be hacked.  Earlier, I had received such a tweet from someone whose Twitter account I follow.  Not knowing it was a spam tweet, I clicked it.  That’s how I got hacked.

The bad news is that my account sent a spam tweet to each and every one of my 339 Twitter followers.  As I tweeted back to Prem:

My Twitter account is set on “public,” so all my tweets, including this conversation between me and Prem, are viewable by all my followers and anyone else who has a Twitter account.

(Note to the North Miami Beach Police Department:  If I spam tweeted you, PLEASE disregard!)

My tweets are also automatically posted on Facebook, per those annoying “authorized apps.”

Yes, my life really is an open book!

One of my Twitter peeps, who was following my tweets with Prem, tweeted back:

Luckily, with the assistance of Prem (and Twitter’s own Help page), I was eventually able to unhack my account.  Thank God for small miracles, right?

Fixing the immediate problem was easy.  I had more trouble, however, changing my freaking password.   Every time I re-set it, I was asked to log in again and then I immediately forgot what I changed it to, and then had to re-set it again!  This happened three or four times.  Needless to say, I was beyond frustrated at that point.

Once I finally remembered one new password, I had to reactivate my Twitter account on my phone, then promptly forgot the password all over again and had to start over.

It’s not easy being blonde.

This happened more times than I care to let on.  You gotta understand – by now it was two o’clock in the freaking morning and my brain was about to explode.

I won’t even go into the excruciating detail of how I figured out how to disable apps that I had “authorized to post from my account,” as Prem had advised.  Since there weren’t any handy teenagers present to delegate that job to, I was on my own.  All I could think of was, “Moms, do NOT try this at home.”

Several deep cleansing breaths later, I found the “apps” page under “Security and privacy” in the “Settings” page, and VIOLA!  I did it.  I was so proud of myself.

And exhausted.

Anyone who knows me, knows that if I have a problem that needs fixing, I will fix it.  I will not rest until the problem is solved no matter how big or small.  Especially technology problems.  When something goes wrong with my computer (or any of my other electronic gadgets), I consider it a personal challenge – one to which I must rise.  There is no option.

Technology may be my friend, but if it challenges me, it has met its match.  I am relentless.  I will not stop until it cries “Uncle!”

Or I have to sic Igor the IT Dude on it.

One way or the other, that freaking app is going to be my bitch.

Late into the wee morning hours, I spent the next anti-climactic twenty minutes painstakingly deleting 339 spam tweets, all the while wondering “Why do I do this to myself?”

The obvious answer was “Because I can.”

The truth is that I love technology.  I love learning something new.  I love knowledge.  Knowledge is power.

I’m also a first class yenta.  If something – anything – is going on in the world, I have to be the first to know.

After the crisis was managed, I tweeted and Facebooked:

Which was promptly “liked” by my 21 year old daughter, who was also apparently awake at 2:00 AM, and was probably laughing her ass off that Mom is so obviously blonde.

In any event, thanks to the ever vigilant Prem Lee Barbosa, I learned all about Twitter Crisis Management.  We Geeks need to stick together.

Prem, baby, I owe you one.  Here’s your shout out:

YOU DA MAN!

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”