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I'm in trouble.

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Every now and then I come across a similar scenario but at a much higher risk (when dealing with organized crime, you should expect ransoms to be significantly more expensive). Internet safety is extremely important due to stuff like hacking. You should be as safe on the internet if not safer than you are in life. Multiple emails, back-up emails (Google encourages you link at least two emails together for security purposes).

This here is a borderline case of identity theft, which is still one of the most difficult cyber crimes to track and solve, yet is a crime with often the most devastating consequences. Now I'm not a specialist in cybercrime (that's another division from my own), nor is Sweden within my jurisdiction but I do think that considering the ransom is relatively low, you could probably just pay the guy forward by asking friends and family for assistance. The police in Sweden are very busy with other things, and considering this is very much just trolling with extra benefits (since again, he isn't asking for anything substantial), you could just pay it forward.

If you need donations, I can contact you personally and help out in any way possible. Just say the word.
 
I'm good. It's just that there are have been a few updates to the situation, neither good:

I. I re-contacted Google a while back, looking for potential help from higher-ups. The team that contacted me the second time tried to perform a more thorough check than the first one to determine my ownership of the account. It went wrong, to say the least. They decided to check the logs to confirm the fact that the hacker changed my recovery email & to ultimately confirm that the account was indeed mine. Some people may not know this, but you don't need to create another email to serve as your recovery email, you can just put in a lot of random nonsense and then @gmail.com/Hotmail/whatever.com at the end when you're setting up your account, because Google's "lost your password?" system doesn't require you to log onto the recovery email itself, just to inform the email to the Google bot. The problem was, when I originally created my account, I didn't keyboard mash. My recovery email was structured like this;

  • First initial of my name + the rest of the name typed out (example = [email protected])
Which meant that my recovery email could be potentially guessed, even if very unlikely, by someone who had access to my name. The Google team who contacted me the second time around noticed this and said that my knowledge of the original recovery email wasn't conclusive proof, even if it did suggest that I knew some of the account's credentials. What actually troubled me was something else;

II. I am currently using Hotspot Shield, mostly out of fear. In the recent past, when I first joined VBW, I used a combination of Tor + Hotspot Shield whenever I browsed the web due to paranoia of being potentially tracked. I stopped doing this since then, but when I go into...certain websites, I still toggle Hotspot Shield just to be sure. Sometimes I forget to close it when I'm logging onto my email, which triggers Google's "you're logging from another device, please confirm that you're the original owner" thing, and forces me to use my phone number or recovery email to log on and confirm the ownership. The Google team who contacted me checked the logs and noticed relatively recent instances of the account being accessed from different IPs somewhere north of Florida in the United States (the general location of my Hotspot Shield fake IPs). One of those instances was just two days before my account was stolen. In reality those occasional different IP accesses were nothing more than me using Hotspot Shield, but the support team began to suspect the following:

  • I was actually the hacker in the story, having managed to receive access to the account by guessing the recovery email due to me knowing the "owner", who changed the recovery email to stop me from logging into his account.
Yes, this actually happened. They didn't outright accuse me of doing so, but they mentioned the possibility and decided that the situation was too "inconclusive" to give me my account back and advised me to either seek help elsewhere or drop the issue. And to make matters worse, I was using Hotspot Shield during my email altercation with them, with the same general IP as in those instances.

II. As a result of the above, the hacker was alerted by Google of the dispute over the account. He has now finally imposed a time-limit because of the "stunt I pulled". I have three days left. I've contacted some distant family members for help after this but they haven't replied to my WhatsApp messages yet, since this pretty much just happened.

I don't know what else I can do, sadly, but I am maintaining hope this'll be over soon.
 
Might have to abandon any and all accounts if possible. Delete all you can, and get out of there. But, this is, of course, a last resort. I really hope this works out, man.
 
Oh jeez. I would really appreciate if others here help out Paradox by quickly contacting him via Discord to get his Paypal donation address.
 
Would it be correct to write an email to Google over the way this was handled if this all works out? I know they did what they could with the info they had, but I'm, hopefully understandably, a little angry at them right now.
 
>As a result of the above, the hacker was alerted by Google of the dispute over the account.

This is the worst thing Google support could do. Ever. Really, I can't believe they actually did that and put your, for lack of a better word, life on a line...

I would love to pay some cash but I don't use PayPal and dollars = PLN is quite big money. But there are many people out there to help you. The best fact is that you're not alone in this situation.
 
I would recommend just paying the hacker for the moment rather than risk to provoke him even more.
 
Tsubaki was apparently willing to send you some money. Please get in contact with her via Discord.
 
Me: Writes wall of text

Also me: deletes it accidentally

Anyway, my only suggestion right now is to send Google a video with you holding your ID Card/document saying stuff like "I've contacted you several times but you believed I was hacker, so here's the proof what I'm saying is true". That should resolve at least the identity issue, hopefully.
 
The technocratic elite don't care about anyone getting hacked over $45. Seriously, the best we can do is support Paradox the best we can with what limited power we have in this situation. It's not that much money to begin with, even 500 krona isn't a lot if you get help.
 
Again, as I think that I have said from the start: First pay the hacker to avoid provoking him, then try other options if that does not work out.
 
USD...why'd it have to be USD? That's almost 5,000 yen. Who on Earth is supposed to be able to pay that?
 
Not for an American. But for example, in my country 1 USD = 4PLN. And 1 PLN is literally the same for us as 1 USD for them. USD to Euro is better though.
 
Damn my guy... Well it ain't much but I have a gift card that hadn't expired yet that still has about two dollars still on it. It's all yours, though again I know it ain't much.
 
I think that he only needs 20$ now. He was sent the other money.
 
@Sera, actually, from my experience; lunch money is like $10-15 in the U.S. But it would be enough money for three meals. However, 45 isn't much as that's pretty much the price of a 3DS game.
 
Anyway, again, I would greatly appreciate if others help him out by quickly contacting him on Discord and sending money anonymously to the collection that his brother set up.

I am regrettably too cowardly to do even that, as I have an army of trolls gunning for me, and if I make a mistake my identity will be exposed, which would result in intense harrassment of me and my family.
 
I do still have the link available though, in case somebody wants to get it by contacting me via fanfiction.net.
 
I contacted at least ten people on my end, most of them unfortunately are in a similar predicament I'm in due to that godforsaken hurricane, so it would be very insensitive to suggest anything from them. Like Ant, I strongly would also appreciate and hope others can come together and donated something. Even two dollars like Reclusive offered is better than nothing.

I know a lot of our community is just teenagers but 25 dollars is nothing. If five people each gave him five dollars he'd be set. He already has loosely half the required money anyway. It really sucks that I am unable to do anything despite wanting to. It's the holiday season, it's the time for giving and sharing anyway. I wouldn't even mind giving him a few thousand yen as an early Christmas present. This happened at the worst possible time.
 
I think it is not fair to assume 25 dollars isnt much, it depends. Here in Brazil, 25 dollars is 102 reais (coin here). Imagine your 102 dollars being only 45, this sucks. But I am still able to help with donations if necessary
 
Yes. I usually donate for things like this, so I am very sorry that I can't this time.

As such, I would really appreciate if others here could contact him via Discord and donate a bit. He only has 2 days or so until his life is destroyed.
 
@M3X

I'm specifically referring to Americans, who for the most part should be able to come up with at least 5 bucks.
 
Thank you. That is very kind of you. He is on a serious ticking deadline though. He only has a little over 2 days left.
 
I really want to donate. But my parents would go mad and pretty much take away my computer for good if they saw that i donated money to what they would call a "random person".

Unless i can find a way to hide that.
 
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