It was the day before I left for Seattle when I was folding laundry and making the bed. I was listening to podcasts on Spotify on my laptop. I set the laptop on the nightstand. Suddenly, the podcast stopped.

I didn’t think much about it. Huh, I thought. Did my screensaver stop it? I tried to start up the podcast again. No luck.

Later, I was looking at my email and I got one from Spotify telling me that a new email was associated with my account, or some such words. They asked me to click on a link if I didn’t change my email.

Well, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck and I wasn’t going to click on their link.

At that moment my son called to chat and I told him what happened.

“What’s the new email address?” he asked.

“Something @Yandex.com.”

“Mom! That’s Russian!”

Yikes! I spent the next hours changing passwords to everything. My son told me I needed a password manager like Last Pass and a VPN. He said in today’s world, those two things are a necessity.

I quickly installed the needed items and felt better.

I copied the body of the email from Spotify and found a link on their website to send in the info that “No. I didn’t change my email address and now I was blocked.” I still wasn’t going to click on their link. But Spotify got back to me quickly and told me they’d secure my account. I had trouble accessing it for several days. Again this week I was logged out.

I wonder why my Spotify account was hacked? What was the purpose? Was it to gain access to my laptop and passwords?

This was not how I had planned spending my last day at home before my trip to Seattle to spread Mom’s ashes and reminisce with family.

Have you been hacked? Was it email or an app?

Do you have VPN or a password manager?