Have you safely stored a list of your digital contacts?

[razz]

A good friend just got hacked.

Due to her volunteer activities on a critical issue, she has or had built a list of 900 contacts. She quickly got help from knowledgeable computer support but they watched all the emails and contact list disappearing. The support tried to stop this and reverse the loss but the hackers caught onto that quickly and moved to another type of attack and the emails disappeared more quickly.
I received an email using her name with a simple appeal for help from the hacker. She had texted me about the hack so I simply deleted that email. Apparently, she has been receiving phone calls about this appeal for help from many of the contacts verifying the request which has been so stressful.

It seems that she does not have a master list of her contacts. It is totally devastating all her efforts.

Do you maintain a list of your contacts outside your computer or safe from hackers?

[Gardnr]

Do you maintain a list of your contacts outside your computer or safe from hackers?

Daily backup of my entire hard drive. Everyone should do this if you have documents you can't replicate.

[Teacher Terry]

No but I don’t but I don’t have a lot of them.

[Alan]

When I retired I printed out my rather extensive work contact list which I also used for personal contacts. I've kept that hard copy in case I need them later but have no updated hard copy of personal contacts, although I do have them stored on two different cloud servers, Google and iCloud.

[iris lilies]

I back up all my documents that I would care about losing every time I make an update.


But for Contacts? No. I do not have a back up of contact file.


I will say that for the important email contacts because I maintain membership lists, those would be easy to spin off from the XL files where they reside. But yeah it would definitely be a pain if all my contacts disappeared.

[Tradd]

I have a written list of contacts.

[Rogar]

I've printed out a list of my digital contacts and stored in a file cabinet. I could do better about backing up files elsewhere. Does your friend happen to know how she was hacked?

[razz]

One of her advisers looked into it and it seems to come from Nigeria but we have not talked at length about it as her house phone is going nuts with calls. She won't be able to use the contacts linked between her cell phone and iPad as they are gone.

I feel really badly for her as she was the driving force to get the issue going, spent so many hours over the past 4 years building the contact list and the relationships with them to share the info updates and support. All those emails are all gone.

[Gardnr]

A good friend just got hacked.

Do you maintain a list of your contacts outside your computer or safe from hackers?

You don't get hacked without an action on your part. She either clicked on a link in an email she shouldn't have, or clicked into a website she shouldn't have.

This comment comes from a cybersecurity officer.

[razz]

With so many contacts in her devices and communicating with them with updates both sending and receiving, it is very possible that one contact was compromised and she clicked into a shared link.
I am naive about hacking so have a protected password vault with Keeper Security and avoid most links unless I trigger the contact. I use Gmail as one of my emails and it is apparently quite protective re spam etc.