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Saturday, May 9, 2020

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.



12 comments:

  1. Thank goodness it was fake poker chips and not real money!

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  2. That is a strange story, for sure! Almost 12 years ago, I was heavily invested (time only) in an online marriage discussion board. A woman befriended me and we would talk via personal email. To make a very long story short, she involved me and many others on the forum with her Munchausen Syndrome. Took an emotional toll, as well as making me suspicious of everyone online for quite some time.

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  3. Everyone I know has experienced some type of scam, although none had big losses. Mostly they just feel silly for falling for it. Misspellings are a nice tip off!

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  4. I must have a very suspicious nature. Even when my "job" when we lived in Vienna was most to sit on my ass, I never was trusting enough to get involved with anything much to do with "on line" whatever. Maybe that's bordering on paranoia? Not sure. I've probably lost more on bad stock decisions than anywhere else. But, as I've heard it said, "you just have to try to be right more often than wrong". Keep on truckin'.

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  5. Phew, sure glad it was only fake chips but it makes one realize how easily the real money could be taken. I got an email supposedly from my niece that had a "click here" address. I never do that but when I looked at her actually legit address again I saw the country of origin was Japan. Pretty sure I was being hustled. They keep getting more and more creative.

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  6. Wow, my blog got a shout-out on Cranky Old Man, thanks Joe! Well, fake or not--getting rooked outta 50 million cyber-chips is still SOMETHING along with that online friendship. But if it helped break ya of an online gambling addiction, that's a silver lining there. It shocks me how much of those sites exist online (and how easy it is for people to lose real money). Lately I've been seeing commercials for those sites too on TV. WoW.

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  7. Wow! You were an Online-Poker-Chip-illionaire! Sorry that you lost your fake fortune.

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  8. Good lesson to have learned with fsje money. I bet you unfriended him soon after on Facebook.

    Betty

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  9. Glad it was only a small amount of money and mostly time you'd lost.

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  10. Live and learn...and I'm glad it wasn't worse. Social media has its risks. You can trust me though 😉!

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  11. i think mother nature favored you by this scam ,she does this to people with gentle heart
    you learned lesson at very small cost dear Joe and it was for good indeed

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  12. Oh man. That would totally suck... That's a lot of time lost. I dabble in online games and I would be totally bummed if all my stuff got taken.

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