It's Christmas. Jesus is 2012 years old. =) Blessed to those who believe in Him.
I went to Baptist church with Mom yesterday. Many of the church members have changed but still recognizable. Yi En got married with a baby already. Pastor has a lot of wrinkles growing out from his face. Pastor's wife still looks the same. Some of the aunties, they still look the same, not much difference. I saw Shi Ting, my old classmate there. She came with her boyfriend who is one of our church members.
To compare between Methodist and Baptist church, I really prefer Baptist church. It gives me a more familiar feeling. I am used to this church. There were some changes to the Baptist church after I left it for about 10 years. There were some new faces which I have not seen before. New church members. The teenagers and kids were very enthusiastic and active in performing last night. The night was filled with different kinds of performances. It was indeed a very well-entertained Christmas eve night.
God has made miracles in many people's life. He did on mine too. How?
On this wonderful day, I would like to share a testimonial.
I went to Baptist church with Mom yesterday. Many of the church members have changed but still recognizable. Yi En got married with a baby already. Pastor has a lot of wrinkles growing out from his face. Pastor's wife still looks the same. Some of the aunties, they still look the same, not much difference. I saw Shi Ting, my old classmate there. She came with her boyfriend who is one of our church members.
To compare between Methodist and Baptist church, I really prefer Baptist church. It gives me a more familiar feeling. I am used to this church. There were some changes to the Baptist church after I left it for about 10 years. There were some new faces which I have not seen before. New church members. The teenagers and kids were very enthusiastic and active in performing last night. The night was filled with different kinds of performances. It was indeed a very well-entertained Christmas eve night.
God has made miracles in many people's life. He did on mine too. How?
On this wonderful day, I would like to share a testimonial.
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My First Testimonial:
God Works as My Defender
Being a Christian for 21 years, I never truly experience the presence of God as virtue as this. I can't really share testimonials like some Christians do, making it sounds so convincing and real as I personally never experience anything like that before. At times, I do envy them because they could speak of God's work to the non-believers. And in this end of the year, I finally experienced God's miracle power in my life. Whether you believe it or not, I know it is Him.
Ephesians 1:3"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:"
This incident happened around the end of November of 2012.
I am a student who works online as a freelance graphic designer. I spent most of my time working at Fiverr. Among all the freelance websites I have tested, Fiverr resulted to give me the most sales. I have been working there for like 7-8 months time. My earning was quite lucrative if you consider my identity is just a student of 21 years old. I manage to earn 4 figures salary per month, which I believe not all working people are able to achieve.
One day, an anonymous man sent me a personal message to my inbox in Fiverr, offering me a business. The deal sounded tempting and I decided to go all out of it due to greed. I neglected the fact that nothing comes free in this world. I was too native then and believed whatever this man said. At Fiverr, every seller is charged $1 from every $5 order that they earned. Basically, Fiverr sellers only earn $4 clean profit. Considering the fact that this man's offer was a big amount, I thought of shifting the deal out of Fiverr so that I can earn the maximum profit from it without subsidizing 20% of my earning to Fiverr.
I replied to his message to suggest having the business outside of Fiverr. From here, the man started to lure me into his trap. We contacted via Facebook. Here is his facebook page which I print screen.
I think was blinded by greed back then. When he contacted me on Fiverr, his username was David something else. Then, on his facebook page, his page was James John. His origin and stuff were suspicious. I was not even aware of those things because all I was interested in was the offer that he would be giving me.
First of all, he asked me to provide him my contact number for some kind of verification purpose, then only he can proceed the deal with me. I was too naive and not aware of such hacking method, I gave it to him. I felt suspicious at times but I just couldn't be bothered much. I could only say that I was too greedy at that moment and was not observant at all.
After having my phone number, he said that he would send a verification code to my phone and I was asked to state the verification code to him. Again, I was not aware of this and gave it to him. Then, I began to feel a little frustrated and curious, why did he need all these information for. He insisted that they were necessary for verification purpose. At that time, I thought he meant to say something like company verification stuff-- I was just too naive and trusted him. He asked for the verification code the second time and I gave it to him.
After 2 hours time, I began to feel strange when I thought about this whole matter again and again. I contacted one of my Fiverr friends, Stan. I told him what had happened and he suspected that the anonymous man was a hacker. I began to freak out and quickly try to sign in to my hotmail to check if I still can access to it. Like what was expected by Stan, he was indeed a hacker. He changed my password and consequently, I could not access to it anymore. The worst thing was, I put a primary email address which I was not able to access to when I register for this account. I just couldn't remember the password for the primary email account. Thus, I could not reset the password of this hacked account and had to just let go this account to the hacker.
When I knew that my hotmail account was being hacked, I was very anxious that he might steal all my money from Fiverr. At that time, I have accumulated a big sum of revenues in Fiverr. The amount was huge for an ordinary person. It was 5 figures. I collected it for some time and always hesitated to withdraw because I would be charged $1 for every withdrawal transaction. Thus, I always wanted to keep the revenues to a big amount until I have the urge to withdraw it for some purpose.
Before I attempt to sign in to Fiverr, I created another email address so that I can switch all online accounts to this new email address. Could you imagine how dangerous it was to use an email address which you no longer has access to for other things like Facebook, Fiverr, Paypal etc? You will not know what will the hacker do without your consent.
After signing up for a new hotmail account, I tried to log in to Fiverr. Thankfully, I managed to do so. It could be he did not attempt to hack my Facebook as his target was Fiverr. I sign in to Fiverr using my Facebook quick log in method. And then, I noticed that he has edited my personal information. He changed my email address to a gmail. He was smart. He used my name with some numbers behind to create a new gmail account. His intention was probably to reduce the tendency of Gmail and Fiverr to notice that he was a hacker.
Knowing that my email address has been swapped, I obviously felt more anxious and worried for my revenues. I quickly check the revenues page to see if my money was still secure. Thankfully, the figure was still correct and my money was not shifted to anywhere else. You probably will not believe this but you have to because this really happened to me.
The hacker tried to withdraw my money to Paypal a few times since 2 hours ago before I noticed my hotmail was being hacked. In other words, he had 2 hours of time to withdraw my money to Paypal.
At Fiverr, the system goes like this. Every Fiverr account is associated with 1 Paypal email address. I have consulted Fiverr admin and they told me that Paypal email address can be changed by doing some email verification procedure. In other words, this explains why the hacker tried to change the email address to gmail. He probably wanted to change the Paypal address to his. And mind you, from all the transaction experiences I had with Fiverr, it took only 5 minutes at most for your revenues to transfer from Fiverr to Paypal account. Only 5 minutes, I repeat.
And can you believe it? The hacker had 3-5 times of failed transaction to withdraw the full sum of my revenues to Paypal. Normally, it was not a difficult task to withdraw money to Paypal. All you need to do is just click the button and you will receive a confirmation withdrawal message in your inbox. Click it and the money will flow from one end to another. And surprisingly, this hacker actually failed to transact my money. He attempted a few times but all resulted in failed transactions.
Consequently, he was not satisfied of course. He hacked into my account and used my account to purchase his gigs. This way, he thought that he could still steal some money, but not as much as directly stealing all sum through withdrawal method. Unfortunately, he was not smart enough. He probably did not know that Fiverr admin can pull back the money from the seller as long as the transaction is done within 15 days. This means that, whichever transaction is carried out within 15 days despite the fact that the order has been marked complete, the money will still go back to the buyer with the help of the admin.
I managed to get back all the stolen money with the admin's help. Being a Top Rated Seller, I was given the privilege to have live chat with the admin from my page. This hacker probably tried to create a confusion to the admin by imitating me. He chatted with the admin and probably said something to them which I was not allowed to know. I was told by the admin that the hacker attempted to pretend to be me to communicate with them.
As a result to resolve this issue, the admin decided to freeze my account by temporarily shutting it down. This means that, no sales will enter my gig during this period and whoever that tries to get into my account/page will be kicked out immediately.
Initially, I thought that by switching my email address and getting a new password for my Fiverr would be sufficient to solve all the problems. I was wrong because the hacker did not leave my Fiverr account at all. He was there since he broke into it. This explained why he could still access to it and used my revenues to buy his gig the next morning when I checked my account. You probably had no idea how terrified and helpless I was when I woke up the next morning, thinking that everything was all right (as I was assured by the admin) but seeing my revenues being slashed down by 4 figures on some unnecessary gigs.
After putting my account at freeze for 1 whole day, thankfully it was able to kick the hacker out from my account. Whenever he attempts to do something to my account when my account has been frozen, he will be automatically kicked out from my account whenever he refreshes the page. That was how it works I guess.
On the other hand, when I knew that he hacked my hotmail account, I was very furious. I scolded and cursed him like crazy on Facebook. To show you evidence, I will print screen our last conversation.
- Conversation started 29 November
I'm sharing out our conversation to show you clearer how he attempted to lure me to his temptation to hack my account. I replaced my personal information with XXXXXXX while I'm disclosing the actual conversation I had with him.
Morales of the story:
- Do not greed over something that sounds too good to be real. This phrase is almost true to apply on every situation in life. Something which sounds too good is hardly to be real.
- Do not attempt to have deals outside of Fiverr unless you want to lead yourself to a state at risk like me.
- Be aware of how hackers hack account. They usually can't hack into your account using the very high end technology method - without communicating with you. Most of the times, hackers hack into people's account by using deceiving method - like in my case. He tried to lure me to his trap by using the "forgetting password" method. He deceived me to provide my information when he is on the other end, trying to do the "forgetting password" procedure to reset my password.
- God is real, whether you believe it or not, I know He is the one who secure my 5 figures revenues. No one can explain why the 3-5 times transaction fail, including the Fiverr admin. I have contacted Paypal and Fiverr admin to clarify this matter as I want to know why the transaction failed. Supposedly, like I have said earlier, it was not a difficult task to withdraw revenues from Fiverr. Yet, the hacker failed to do so, after so many attempts. This further enhanced the truth that God is doing some miracle defense for me.
God's Promise:
Give More and You Will Be Rewarded More than You Gave
Feeling extremely thankful with God's gratitude, I decided to give 10 times extra offering on one of the Sunday's services. Well, God was as real as He promised us. When you give more, you will receive more. You probably will not believe this unless you experience it like I did. When I gave more, I actually receive more bigger sales on Fiverr. =)
2 Corinthians 9:8-15
8 And God can give you more blessings than you need. Then you will always have plenty of everything -- enough to give to every good work. 9 It is written in the Scriptures: "He gives freely to the poor. The things he does are right and will continue forever." 10 God is the One who gives seed to the farmer and bread for food. He will give you all the seed you need and make it grow so there will be a great harvest from your goodness. 11 He will make you rich in every way so that you can always give freely. And your giving through us will cause many to give thanks to God. 12This service you do not only helps the needs of God's people, it also brings many more thanks to God. 13 It is a proof of your faith. Many people will praise God because you obey the Good News of Christ -- the gospel you say you believe -- and because you freely share with them and with all others. 14 And when they pray, they will wish they could be with you because of the great grace that God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his gift that is too wonderful for words.
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