Ever had one of these weeks where it feels like someone has deliberately set out to annoy you? Well that’s me this week! Let me tell you a story.

It began on Monday afternoon when my best friend from schooldays, with whom I am still in regular touch, WhatsApped me to tell me that he thought my email account had been hacked, as it came as a surprise to him to receive an invitation from me to a party! Knowing my circumstances he knew that was impossible. A little later my ex-wife also messaged, to say that she, both of our daughters, their husbands, and one son-in-law’s father had also received the same email. Only one answer to that: some bastard had hacked my account. I immediately changed the password and thought that would be the end of things, but the aftermath has lingered.

Some of you may have wondered why you saw this week’s Tuesday Tunes post twice, and some of you were even kind enough to ‘like’ it both times. As a check, I follow my own blog, and knew I had a problem as soon as I posted it: I didn’t get the usual notification email. But I realised that my inbox was almost entirely empty, and began doing a passable impression of this guy:

Created by me and ChatGPT

To resolve the blog issue, as I assumed that none of my followers who relied on email notifications would be in the loop, I changed the email address associated with my WordPress account to my backup email, duplicated the original post, and republished it. That seems to have worked, as I got the notification immediately, as I should. I have also been receiving notifications on that account of posts from blogs I follow, so I think that part of my world is safe. For my post, I left the first publication open and interestingly the two are very similar in their stats: the second version is just ahead on ‘likes’ – by the massive margin of one. Combined, the two versions have roughly the same number of views and likes as I would usually expect, so I think I’ve recovered it well enough.

But that still leaves my email account and its total lack of communications: why is no one talking to me? Amongst all the crap that finds its way in there are some I really need to see, like communications from my bank. I spent most of Tuesday opening up the account in the vain hope that, as if by magic, loads of emails would suddenly tumble out of the ether. Nope, nothing. So I decided yesterday to go down the route we all try to avoid: finding my way through the maze of ‘helpful’ tips in the hope of reaching a point of contact. As part of that I did find that someone in another part of the UK had set up a passkey on the account on Sunday – definitely not me, so I deleted that. I managed to find the bit where Yahoo finally stopped sending me around the maze and gave me a way of raising the issue with them, so I did.

This is where I almost lost it. Having reported the problem I got a final screen which said that one of their team would shortly be in touch – by email. Spot the problem? Of course, nothing much changed for the rest of yesterday, and not knowing how long their usual responses took I gave up for the day and decided to return again today after my usual night of disturbed sleep to have another go. I did see one small change yesterday, though: six new emails appeared in my inbox. Guess what they were? Yep, the ones which the hackers had sent out to around fifty people inviting them to my party. I just hope they all ignored it, as many of them are long distant vague acquaintances and others I didn’t even know!

I also tried checking the other folders in my account, and lo an behold there were more than 200 unread emails in my Trash folder, including yesterday’s automated reply from Yahoo telling me that it would take them eight hours and that recovery might only be partial, at best. Too right! I have now spent some time restoring to my inbox the ones I wanted to have, but can only do that by using the web version – their app doesn’t allow such changes. Another little bit of added annoyance and frustration, just to add to my day.

I think I’m up to date with your blogs from Tuesday morning onwards, but if anyone is missing a like or comment that you might otherwise have expected from me, please accept my apologies and this explanation. I just can’t cope with more!

One underlying question has been left with me after this episode: why do they do it? Are they hoping someone will be sufficiently stupid to start giving them details that could cost them money? I check my bank account online every day and would quickly spot any fraudulent transactions, and I’m sure most people do the same. If not, you should! Maybe it is their perverse way of having fun? If so, I have a simple message for them: “Go Fuck Yourselves!”

As always, I leave you with a tune. This kind of sums up the way I was feeling yesterday, in particular:

See you again for Song Lyric Sunday 👍🎶