LJ hack scare

[lobelia321]

zarah5 is back as zarah5v2!!!! Whee!!!

Now, this scares me. Her LJ was hacked into by some nasty piece of shit, so it had to be deleted (as in zarah5) but now that she's back she has lost her entire journal. It's all gone. This shocks me.

Any ideas, anyone, how one can insure oneself against this happening? And how one can back up one's LJ?

Comments

[azewewish.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can totally back up your LJ and all of the posts & comments. There are quite a few different tools available, but the one I use is here:

http://community.livejournal.com/ljbackup_dev/

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Does this work for Macs??

[azewewish.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, hon. I've only ever owned PCs.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

The hack seems based on folks who at one time used hotmail email accounts.

You can make a regular PDF backup (and donate, if you can) at
www.ljbook.com/frontpage.php

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Pdf. Goodness. Of hundreds of pages? Well, it is worth it!

[ook.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is WHY anyone would want to hack the LJ account of a total stranger. LJ accounts are like hotmail accounts -- you can create as many as you want for free and you can backdate posts to create an account "history." I don't get the logic of hacking random LJ accounts, even with malacious intent -- if you don't know the person you hacked, what's the motivation?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what this hacker wanted to do with the LJ...? Sell drugs? Do porn? Why not create your own account? It is a mystery. Identity theft!!!

[azewewish.livejournal.com]

They're going after popular accounts with a big flist to get them to click on sites that allow keylogging.