I’m cringing as I type this, but I pride myself on being a digital native. I grew up surfing the web, learning my lessons about websites like Craigslist and Omegle (a site for chatting with random strangers that was popular when I was in middle school) through personal experience. In school, we were given lectures about internet safety and etiquette. Hell, my community service in high school was to teach senior citizens how to use their smartphones, computers, and social media. A key component of the lesson plan: Avoid being scammed online.
So when I recently fell for an extremely simple phishing scheme, I couldn’t help but feel like an idiot.
Shortly after getting verified on Twitter—an “achievement” that I was celebrating—an account purporting to be Twitter support DM’ed me. They asked for my phone number and any emails I had associated with the account, explaining that they needed to confirm my verification. Of course I wanted my verification confirmed—I’d worked hard to get that shiny blue check. I handed over the info, without pausing to realize their request made no sense. It’s the most basic way to scam someone: just ask for their personal information. As soon as they requested the second code sent to my email, I knew I had been duped.
But it was too late—they already had enough information to change my password. My Twitter no longer belonged to me. According to the email I got from Twitter, it now belonged to “ah****@g****.***.”
Embarrassed, I quickly went through the motions of changing all my email and banking passwords just to be safe. At the time of writing, I still haven’t recovered my Twitter, though luckily the hacker hasn’t posted anything that I can see.
And honestly, I didn’t care as much about what my 600 or so followers would think. It was admitting the hack to people I actually know that stressed me out. I wanted to get my friends to report my account. But doing that would mean telling them what had happened.
I had my excuses. It was 7 a.m. where I was and I was dealing with a totally separate crisis at home. My mind wasn’t fully there. Not to mention, I was just basking in the satisfaction of knowing that I had now a blue check mark, a symbol of legitimacy as a journalist.
It didn’t matter how much I had been lectured about scams at school or in the workplace, or how well I was versed in the ins and outs of social media. It mattered that I was emotionally vulnerable, frustrated at something happening in my personal life but also excited about my check mark. And although I felt that the hack meant I was stupid, I realized getting hacked isn’t necessarily about lacking internet smarts. At its core, it’s about feelings.
And the response is emotional too. As someone who had been taught (and taught!) about all the types of scams, I felt as though I was a failure for not realizing what was happening sooner. As I used to explain to my elderly “clients,” I had given someone the “key” to something I cared about, without ensuring their identity, and without really thinking about it.
I searched for comfort online (where else), and I realized that, of course, a lot of people are foiled by internet trickery. Social media scams are sky-rocketing, according to the Federal Trade Commission, with this kind of fraud costing users $770 million in 2021, a figure nearly 20 times what it was in 2017. People mostly lose money when the scams involve crypto, or fake retail companies. But even a straightforward hack feels unnerving. Slate’s very own editor-in-chief Hillary Frey told me her Twitter got hacked last January, after she received a text message that mimicked a two-factor authentication message. Dorie Chevlen wrote a great piece in Slate about what the experience of being hacked taught her about social media. (She was also hacked right after being verified.) “Being hacked feels like being locked out of your home while watching through the windows as someone robs it,” she wrote. Hearing about other people falling prey to scams—especially people who have “made it” in journalism—was super validating, and made me feel a lot better about the situation.
Certainly, individually educating every computer user is not enough to stop the scams. In a way, hacking is just another aspect of how the internet produces shame. Social media fuels unhealthy comparisons, and advertisements often have a humiliating effect. People are constantly trying to pull one over on us. We don’t have as much control over our online selves as we think.
I’m no longer helping elders with their technological woes. But if I were, in addition to the practical tips on how to spot a scammer, I’d probably emphasize that you’re not alone if you’re hacked. And shame is totally normal in this kind of situation. You don’t get hacked because you’re stupid. You get hacked because you’re human.
