It happened yesterday, and the events of a few moments took me most of the day to resolve. It was extraordinary how a series of "coincidences" occurred simultaneously, each occurrence confusing the others so that it was hard to distinguish what was creating what. It began with the discovery that an order placed overnight through my website Shop for meditation downloads had failed to arrive at its destination, and that the usual official notifications of the order payment had failed. On checking the Paypal business account to check the order, I found the transaction history since mid-December was missing, and when I tried to phone the helpline, the official customer services number was not working. At this point, just before 9 a.m., a client called to make an appointment and as we were speaking there was a power cut which broke the call - and then my e-mail accounts, business, financial and personal, all failed simultaneously and I could not access even webmail. It was not a good start to the working week, particularly with my website manager being away until the afternoon.
So, with nothing to be done to resolve these issues for a few hours, I decided to organise a party! And it was a pleasure to talk to friends and neighbours on a Monday morning with an invitation to be together in my home soon. The events of the early morning, coming one after the other as they did, had felt as if (and I try not to be fanciful) I were under attack, which proved to be closer to the truth than I would have believed possible.
I discovered later that my email accounts had been targeted by Chinese hackers in a sustained onslaught which had ramifications far beyond my e-mail facility, as I had discovered: I had not realised how determined and constant and sophisticated is the effort by international criminals to access information and infiltrate accounts and websites. It is big business and a major threat to anyone with an e-mail account.
Fortunately this attack was detected early and my accounts, and money, protected before any harm was done, and even though it took time to resolve and was most inconvenient as well as being quite worrying, I was grateful for the reminder about expecting the unexpected but meanwhile being prepared and protected as far as possible. I was lucky.
With all working calmly and smoothly again, I am amazed and relieved still by the potential for serious damage that was averted by the protection systems that were in place and the help of
Aval Solutions, who give me Internet and website support, in identifying the issue and resolving it safely. All the problems of the early morning have been solved or have resolved themselves, for now, but meanwhile cyber attack goes on relentlessly, against me and perhaps you: it is not just another country which is risk, but everyone – but protection is always available.
Claire Montanaro is a spiritual teacher, channel and blogger with special interest in esoteric philosophy and the world in transition. Loves nature and wildlife. Author of “Spiritual Wisdom”.
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