Hacked & A Day at the Races

When I woke up on Sunday morning I had no idea that it would turn into one of the worst days of my Information Technology (IT) life in recent memory… It started with realizing that our avast! Internet Security software on our desktop computer was not functioning properly and was followed soon after by the discovery that while we were at church (of all places) that my personal email account had been hacked into, for the first time ever! Apparently whoever, or whatever automated program, managed to do this was sending suggestive and inappropriate emails to everyone from our pastor at the Catholic parish we regularly attend in our neighborhood to my most of my husband’s aunts, uncles and cousins! I knew that of my friends and family would know better than to think that I wanted to help them improve certain body parts or areas of their personal lives. It is definitely one of those times and moments in life where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry!

I also had to put most of the issues I discovered Sunday morning on hold until that night, as we had long standing plans to spend the afternoon with my family for a very belated Father’s Day celebration at the Arlington Race Track, followed by dinner at one of our favorite Northwest suburban restaurants, Hackney’s on Lake in Glenview. This is an annually tradition on my side of the family and as much as it pained me to walk away from all the computer issues that were transpiring on the home front, I sucked it up and was able to still really enjoy the day with my parents, Bob, Sean, Abby my sister, brother-in-law and our niece/Goddaughter! As many of you know (who had the pleasure of receiving one of the emails that the hacker(s) sent you on my behalf on Sunday), I did try throughout the day en route to and from the race track to send this message (or one similar, as I edited it a bit as I sent it over and over again) from my iPhone to all those I could tell had been sent spam from my email account:

I am sorry for the earlier email(s) that you received from my email account today. My email account was apparently hacked into. I have changed my password. Please do not click on any links that you received in any emails that were sent from my account earlier today. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Take care,
Kathy

Getting back to our day at the races… We had a wonderful time and Abby especially got a kick out of the whole experience! She kept shouting enthusiastically throughout the day “horses,” “coming,” and “race!” She was too cute! Sean enjoyed another year of teaming up with his maternal grandma to decide which horses she would bet on in each race! I also had a blast trying my hand at picking some winners, but did not choose correctly for a single race on Sunday. It seemed to just be that kind of day… Though when you are consistently betting on two horses in each race and “Exacta Boxing” them, the odds of getting it right are very slim…

I am happy to share that after I enjoyed my “go to” dinner at Hackney’s (French Fried Onions for our appetizer, a Patty Melt and fries) with my family, we drove back to Beverly and got the kids to bed, I was able to resolve all of our computer issues and then some with the help of an amazing tech support service that I contacted in conjunction with trying to get our internet security system up and running again. Though they suggested it would take only 45 – 60 minutes, it ended up taking more like 4 hours, but it was totally worth it! I wrote more about this tech support service, called iYogi and my experience with them that night in this review on my review blog One of a Kind Reviews.

I will leave you with a some of my favorite photos from our day at the race track yesterday! I hope that you have a wonderful week and that you that all of the technological devices and software in your life continue to function well or at least a lot better than ours were when my day began yesterday!

Grandpa Kevin, Grandma Jacquie and Sean in the stands at the track.

Grandma Jacquie, Abby and Sean checking out the horses before a race.

Our Benson Family in between races at the track.

Abby saying “horses!” while watching a race!

Abby and Sean very excited about one of the horse races!

I also took a great photo of my sister Meg, brother-in-law Bill and their daughter Cora at the race track on Sunday, but I am saving that for another blog entry that I am working on about their sweet family that I plan to post later this week. So stay tuned and keep your eyes out for that.