A few days ago, my adwords were shut down - I got the infamous : your account has been cancelled and cannot be reactivated ' notice. So of course, I email adwords. And they email me back with a 'we'll investigate this and get back to you. About 5 minutes after I emailed, I got an email that I was undergoing a security check. Thankfully, it was not a full body scan.
Suspicious by nature, I railed against adwords - THE WEEK BEFORE XMAS, a security 'check'. Right.
I got a lovely email back that in fact, it WAS really and truly a security check - and a day or so later, that the check was done, and voila, my account had been hacked. Someone had sneaked in and done a nasty 'fast loans' adwords ad under one of my luxury yarn campaigns. I was aghast!
So I asked for some details - they gave me a few snippets of info. I am wondering if anyone has experienced this - and how the evildoers got in....
They evidently used one of my older emails on the account. I have since disabled that on my account, but am wondering - i recently 'tested' clickable, and some other third party tools to manage multiple adwords campaigns and am wondering whether this opened some kind of security hole. Anybody?
And yes, they completeled the check, I've scanned and rescanned every computer I use to access this account, and the account is live again - but still. The most interesting thing? My sales were huge for the days adwords was down. Hmmmmm.....
