Info's of

It’s so embarrassing. Here I am, a contributor at MakeUseOf with a background in data security, and I’m about to tell you how my Skype account got hacked. Not years ago before I became aware of the various threats and the signs that an intrusion had occurred, but recently. Just last Christmas.

The worst thing about this is that I’d noticed that there was something not quite right about the way the account was behaving, but in the heady Christmas rush I’d put it down to Microsoft’s recent changes to the service (after all, it’s hardly been the same since the new centralised data centre was introduced in place of the previous P2P system, has it?).

The hacker was clever, too, using my account just a little to call his relatives/associates in Pakistan. In fact he’d used so little of the first bunch of Skype call credit that it wasn’t until the second grab for extra credit that I noticed anything was wrong. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one slow off the mark, resulting in a painful and needlessly drawn-out process of confirming my identification several times.

It wasn’t until my 37th birthday that I received an email from Skype, informing me that my account was under review.

Immediately I realised what had been going on, the pieces of the jigsaw falling into place. To describe me as angry would be something of an understatement (especially as I had recently had this guide to three Skype security issues published) – but rather than wishing any harm on the sorry excuse for a human being whose non-existent morals are contributing to an unprecedented level of theft and fraud, I was angry with myself for not recognizing the signs