In the November issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows shares the
disturbing story of what happened when his wife’s Gmail account
got hacked earlier this year. First, she couldn’t log into her
account. Then, her contacts received a troubling message that
she was stranded in Madrid with no money, and she needed them to
wire her funds, immediately. (It might sound like a scam, but
many recipients were concerned enough to contact her husband.)
Soon, she had no access to her account and all her
messages—years’ worth—had been deleted. [In Pictures: 10 Ways to
Start Earning Extra Money Now] Fallows and his wife, Deb,
followed Gmail’s instructions on recovering a compromised
account, and eventually regained access, but they were unable to
recover her old emails until Google executives got involved.
(Before James Fallows called on his own contacts, who happened
to be high-level executives in the company, Google had declined
to help them further.) Fallows uses the experience to show just
how easy it is for hackers to br