Hacked For $50,000,000

Hacked For $50,000,000

Doug @https://apachedugs.blogspot.com/  recently posted about almost falling for a hacker.  He was alerted because of a simple misspelling.  He makes the point of just never opening any web site from an email or clicking on one of those “Click Here” buttons.

I do the same, even on emails that I am almost certain are from someone I know…because sometimes that someone you know is not someone you know.

I learned my lesson (I hope, sometimes these clowns are extra sneaky) several years ago when I was hacked for $50,000,000!  Well actually it was $50,000,000 of basically worthless on-line poker chips.

I was addicted at the time to an on-line poker game through Facebook.  It took a lot of games and several months to grow my pot to $50,000,000.  While the chips were worthless, they did allow you to play in higher stakes games with, in general, better players.  You could buy chips for a nominal amount so there was some value to the chips, but mostly a big stack gave you playing credibility.

Anyway, playing this game you made certain “friends” and you could play with and against them when you saw them on a table, thus some “Poker friendships” were developed.

One such friend had a whole story about where he lived, what he did, and there was a lot of back and forth conversation.  He was a solid guy.  I did notice, that his “Poker Stack” often varied from a few million to over 100,000,000 in chips.

We became Facebook “Friends.”

I asked him how he gained so many chips and he claimed he had a friend who was a very good player and he would simply give them to him from time to time by losing to him on a high stakes table.

One day not long after becoming “Friends,” I received a message from another Facebook friend saying, “Check out this story from Lafayette!” with a website.  I clicked on the website.  I got a strange result and something clicked.  I quick signed on to the Poker Table and saw myself on a high stakes table betting and losing.  By the time I was able to sign off, my $50,000,000 in chips were gone.

Initially I was really pissed, that someone would go to the trouble to establish a friendship only to glean some information to hack $50,000,000 of “Play” chips.

Later I realized this asshat did me a favor by teaching me not to trust anything on the internet regardless of what or who you “Think” might be the source.

$50,000,000 in fake poker chips was a lot less than giving access to a bank account.  Not only did this teach a lesson, it also got me off that on-line poker playing addiction.