Hacked!

I had the horrible experience last week of having my e-mail hacked. I was rather surprised when I saw an e-mail from myself in another e-mail account that I have. Moreover that I was supposedly in London and begging for money so that I could get home. :( 


These things happen sometimes. But how do you handle that professionally? How do you reassure your clients that their information is safe, when obviously yours wasn't? I have no idea how they hacked my e-mail, I just know that someone did. 


Okay, all that being said, I wanted to have a little fun with this horrid experience. How? Because the hacker had very poor grammar! Here's the message:

Hello,      I'm sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling,I'm writing this with tears in my eyes as i write to you..My family and I came over here to London United Kingdom for a short vacation,Unfortunately my worst fears came true. As we  were headed back to the hotel, we were robbed buy a crazy man with a gun. He took our bags,  wallets, and phones. We have no credit cards or cash. Thankfully, we had left our passports in the  safe at the hotel We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in few hours from now but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills. We just need ($1,500) so we can settle the hotel bills and fly back home..As soon as we get back home, I can repay you. If you can help, send me an email back, we have internet access from the  lobby in the hotel. I'm Sorry to bother you, I just didn't know .how else to contact you quickly. Am freaked out at the moment!! Thanks, Heather Okay, so anyone I correspond with regularly would know that this wasn't written by me. Honestly. #1 I don't even have a passport. There's no way I could be in London! But onto the actual writing of this message... The first thing I noticed was the spacing and punctuation is whack! No spaces after commas, but there are spaces after periods, double periods, random periods, double spaces, no spaces, and capital letters after commas... it makes me wince just reading it! The double use of the word write (and writing) there are so many better ways that I would have worded that! There is no flow there. London United Kingdom: okay, I already mentioned that I don't even have a passport, but who says "London United Kingdom"? Not me. I might say "London" or "The United Kingdom" but never "London United Kingdom" - especially not without a comma... "My worst fears came true": I'm sorry, being mugged is not my worst fear. I'm not saying that I would happily welcome a guy with a gun robbing my family, but I'm not living in fear of it happening. Just sayin'. Buy vs by: really?  P.S. I don't own a credit card, so it would be really hard for someone to steal one from me... Wait! Did I mention that I don't even own a passport?! How could it be in the safe if I don't have one? Um, I don't freak out easily. I have extreme faith in my God to provide. If that ever actually happened, I am confident that I would turn to Him. Finances are one of the things that just never freak me out, no matter how rough it gets, God makes a way. Oh, and I wouldn't contact random people on my e-mail list. I would contact my mom - that's it. :) My advice to this hacker? Get an editor. PLEASE! But wait! There's more! Message #2: Oh no...l know this sounds weird and you wouldn't believe me...Yes, am really stuck out here in the UK and it's so devastating at the moment i really need your help l wish l could cal but l don't have access to phone at the moment , I really need your help to get myself out of this mess. The hotel management has been kind to let have an access to a library to get across to anybody to help me since my luggage's was also taken away.Hope to hear from you soon.....I don't really have much time I'm in a Local Library right now please get ME out of here. This one just makes me laugh. Am I in the hotel lobby, or the public library? Aparently I'm not sure. Maybe the robber stole my brain along with my non-existant credit cards? Okay, but back to the original question. When things like this happen, how do you reassure your client base that everything is okay? I'd love to hear from you!

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