I left my computer for two and a half hours this afternoon to go meet with my thesis adviser one last time (got the final edits!) and go to the grocery store.  When I returned I discovered that my eBay account had been hacked and it had been used to send out a bunch of emails to people, asking them to purchase things off eBay.  This effected my Gmail account, because it’s the address associated with the account.  EBay sent me an email recommending that I change my email password, but when I logged out of my account in order to do so, I discovered that I was then locked out and couldn’t get back in.

I’ve now been locked out of my Gmail account since 4:30 pm this afternoon.  I still can’t do anything about the eBay account, as you can’t even report a problem if you can’t log in and since they’ve frozen my account, I can’t log in.  Of course, there are no phone numbers to call.  I was able to change my password on my Gmail account and it’s allowing me access to chat and my reader with the new password, so I think that after the recommended 24 hour period that apparently it takes to reset your account after something like this I should be able to get back in.  I hope.

It would not be good to not be able to get into my Gmail account for an extended period of time, because as I’ve started establishing myself as a writer, that’s become the account from which I coordinate projects, all my Slashfood stuff and everything related to Fork You.  However, there is a sort of perverse part of me that is finding it liberating.  It’s an unscheduled vacation from email that I wasn’t planning, but I’m trying to make the best of.