Has anyone else had this happen recently? Any ideas how it was done and what the perpetrators get out of it? Should I be worried that my pc has been infiltrated?
Thanks.
[edited by: buckworks at 9:31 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2008]
[edit reason] Please avoid specifics. [/edit]
seen it happen first hand.
have you gotten any mysterious emails lately regarding Adwords? an associate of mine got some just before his was hacked. im wondering if they are targeting accounts, whoever is doing this.
i would also look at the domain that the new account was pointing to and either call them on it, or maybe seek legal action.
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Also, I would think they would be able to see the IP adddress of whoever added the campaign or some other identifier that may exclude yourself.
Freddy - just out of interest, was your password a weak one like mine?
Are you saying that my only option (except getting the credit back) is issuing chargeback with my bank? It's a long process where I'll lose these $6K for months. I really hope that I won't be charged by Google at all.
About password - yes, it was weak, very weak. However, I've checked my other 2 accounts which passwords contained at least 8 characters itth bboth letters and numbers, and these accounts are not hacked.
For the charges that have already been made to my card those were the only two options Google gave me.
Good to hear about your passwords - that seems pretty good evidence that it was a brute force attack.
Hope it all works out OK for you!
It's now Nov 20 and no refund, even after followup mail. I'm still on the hood for the credit card charge, plus interest.
I notified the cc company to get it on record that this had occurred since there is a time limit for reporting fraudulent use. To go forth with trying to get my money back through the credit card company requires the complaint be forwarded to the fraud department, and then who knows, due to the large size. If it's over 1000 or 2000 it doesn't get disputed, but is sent to the fraud department.
I'm very unhappy about their slowness in refunding me the money (funny how fast they are at charging me), but my conversations with google were good. I wish the actions matched.
It's conceivable I could be on the hook for all of this due to google's delay, if it changes it's mind. I'm fairly confident it will all work out, but this is significant money.
-- Roger
It wasn't a dictionary word, but wasn't a strong password.
It is now. :-)
-- Roger
It took a while before I realized the report was set to "All Time" rather than "Yesterday." During that time, I changed my credit card into to something invalid.
So far, I haven't seen a charge on my credit card for the fradulent campaign, so it may be that Google tried the invalid number.
-- Roger
I wonder how many of the hacks were from gmail accounts.
Google wrote off the full amount and told me to be careful about clicking links in emails and to check my system for malware. Thing is, I never click links from emails, especially for google and I can't find any suspicous programs on my computer. I have no idea where they got my login info.
i would expect them to obviously deny it, but someone has to be working for them...
i wouldnt hack an account for just any old site, it would have to be worth it to me.
[edited by: eelixduppy at 1:00 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2008]
[edit reason] removed URL [/edit]
i was like "how am i going to praise the all mighty password when i just got hacked... the webmasterworld is going to laugh at me.."
oh the shame i felt... it was even worse because i dont have any active campaigns right now...
My notebook computer died a few weeks ago and I've been using a different computer at home. In spite of running an antivirus program and using a firewall, I think something wormed its way into the other computer. When I ran a full virus scan and Spybot S&D, several things where found and cleaned up.
Even though I haven't had any sign that any other accounts were compromised, I used another PC, my office computer, to change all my passwords for sites like my bank and credit cards. I switched to more secure passwords - with special characters, numbers, and mixed upper/lowercase. Ironically, one of my credit cards doesn't allow special characters in the password.
You can see were it could go from allowing this to continue....:)
coachm, I'd be screaming from the rafters if I were you. (Not that that would help, but I sure would be) Making you wait that long for a refund and to use your account is unconscionable.
I wonder how many of the hacks were from gmail accounts.
No gmail here.
(edited) Payment sent according to google, today, but not yet on my credit card. Assume it will be there shortly.
Over a month wait, and I guess I'm on the hook for the interest.
I got extremely good help both on the phone and via email. I'd recommend phoning if you can, and following up with an email. I "bugged" them a bit since the process went so slowly, but they were apologetic and tracked the whole thing across several representatives. I was fairly pleased overall, but I do wish the refund was faster, particularly since the investigation phase was relatively short.
Hope it all works out for you guys. I wonder what we all have in common that caused us to end up targeted, but I guess we'll never know.
