Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Hackers Hit Brennan Where it Counts

This CAN happen to you.

Author Sarah Rees Brennan recently underwent quite an ordeal (and right before the release of her first novel “The Demon’s Lexicon”). Someone hacked into her e-mail account and from there her live journal. They deleted all her e-mail, contact list, and every post on her blog (seven years worth). The worst part was the timing of the attack. Six days before the release of her novel. Gone were the posts about her book deal and everything she’d gone through until now. The first e-mail from her publisher was lost forever. And all the pertinent information on people she needed to contact before her release date was deleted. Devastating for any writer. I feel for her.

We’ve all heard we should save our stories (and some of us have learned the hard way that we should do this in multiple places… oops!), but somehow, e-mail and blogs seemed safe. What an eye-opener! Check out Kristin Nelson’s blog where Sarah Rees Brennan tells the whole story as well as offers tips on how to protect ourselves.

Have you been backing up your blog posts, e-mails, and contact lists? Better start now.

21 comments:

  1. That is so scary. Thanks for this info.

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  2. That is absolutely awful. I am possibly not doing enough to make my info safe. I just can't believe that happened!

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  3. I'm always worried about losing my work! I double back up now! Thanks for posting on my blog The Keyboard this morning :D To answer your question, I write paranormal/romance (people with 'unusal' abilities mainly and Urban Fantasy) Thanks for the follow!

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  4. Wow, don't like that at al. So sorry for her.

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  5. I wish they could find and punish the hacker! My heart goes out to the author and her years of loss. I've got an external hard drive add-on, so hope that helps protect my stuff.

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  6. I back up everything but the contact list. Now I've got to go do that! Good post!

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  7. Yeah, I read about that, it was so creepy and horrid. I can just imagine how terrible that would be. :(

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  8. That's so awful! Hackers are just vandals. And vandalism benefits no one. It's just hurting to hurt.

    Sad.

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  9. wow - great post and link. I never thought about changing passwords for public wifi. excellent idea.

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  10. How awful! She must have been devastated! And angry. I know I would be. Thanks for posting this, Lynnette! I thought email was safe to use as a back-up, too. Now I've got to rethink this.

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  11. Wow, how scary. It is amazing that someone who do this to another person.

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  12. Do you have any suggestions on how to back up blogs?

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  13. I agree with everyone. This was just a crazy thing for her to go through.

    Lady Glamis: I'm not a techie kind of person, but as far as I know, you'd have to save your blog post in Word and on your hard drive or USB key. I'm doing both.

    Anyone else have any suggestions?

    Lynnette Labelle

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  14. Not good at all!!! Crazy people to do crud like this!I am horrible at backing up, I need to do this much more often!

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  15. Wow, that would be awful. I try to back up my novel, but often forget because then it becomes a hassle the next time I open it up. I better go do that now.

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  16. rotten luck! I save each month of the blog posts in a file on my backup drive. Should the blog ever implode, I can recover the posts, if not the comments.

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  17. No, I haven't been. I guess I never thought about backing up blog posts.

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  18. That's terrible! I have backed up my blogs and website but how can you back up emails? Will go over to read the link now.

    In Quest of Theta Magic

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  19. What an awful thing to happen. I always back up my novel on diskette as I go, and occasionally print out my e-mail contact list, but hadn't done anything about the blogs. Luckily, I only have about six weeks' worth to worry about. One more thing for the To Do List.

    Patricia

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  20. I wrote a third of my first novel without backing it up. Then my computer got a virus and I couldn't open Word, much less get to my docs.

    I think I aged 10 years from stress until a computer genius fixed the problem and found my files.

    My #1 rule now...Multiple backups.

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