One morning a few weeks ago, I woke up to a series of curious emails in my inbox. One after the other – Amazon, Venmo, Paypal, Netflix, . . . No, I had not authorized a change in my password on any of these accounts in my sleep. But somehow, each had been changed. I suddenly had strange email addresses attached to all of my accounts – and I was locked out of all of them.

For the next day or so, it kept happening. Less important platforms – Spotify access does not really change my world – and of course, I was on to the scam now so for the most part I was able to get ahead of the changes and lock my own accounts. And the $2,000 unauthorized charge to my checking account was promptly reversed by our bank.

I am not sure what the answer is here. The very nice police officer to whom I tried to report this theft quickly assured me that because this was so common, there was really nothing to do.

Common or not, I did not enjoy this experience one bit. More than a little creepy.