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Mat Honan, a senior wired.com author was hacked recently. This article is the story about it. It is a lengthy read but worth the time. It's given me pause and caused me to closely examine the security settings I have in place for all of my accounts and how disasterous it would be to lose as much information as he has.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/ ... n-hacking/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And if you haven't already, consider looking into some backup services. I use CrashPlan in addition to doing a physical backup to an external HD using SyncBack. There are many many options out there but do yourself and insulate yourself from these types of losses before it is too late.

While there are some good suggestions in the article, it should be pointed out that this was more of a social engineering attack. The weakest link in the chain probably comes down to the fact that he had his Apple .me email address linked to his Amazon account, and the fact that Apple was willing to accept the last 4 digits of a credit card number as credible proof of identity. It was really a perfect storm.
Amazon and Apple both claim to have closed the security loopholes.

You are correct about it being social engineering, I simply used the word he did in the title. I have been reevaluating some of how I do things online as a result though.

A technology writer who calls this a hack is a hack.

I read about it a while ago - pretty crazy

SQLGeek wrote:And if you haven't already, consider looking into some backup services. I use CrashPlan in addition to doing a physical backup to an external HD using SyncBack. There are many many options out there but do yourself and insulate yourself from these types of losses before it is too late.

I have a five user license for CrashPlan Pro which I haven't installed yet. How do you like it?

I like it quite a bit! I'm only using it on one computer now but it is non-intrusive and easy to setup. You can configure how much CPU power is being put into your back up operation when you're both using the computer and when it is not in use. The initial upload took several days but considering it was roughly 50-60 gigs, that's to be expected. I also get daily reports summarizing how much was backed up. I have it set to back up every 4 hours and the nice part is you can set different retention schedules for longer terms.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about it. I haven't been using it long but I think it was a wise choice.