I was prepared to ignore the first few Facebook emails from my contacts there imploring me to visit web sites that were totally out of character for them. “Hey, change you password, you’ve been hacked” I would email them. But no more. Things are getting out of hand.

Just now I had an IM conversation with a former TechCrunch analyst and colleague, Daniel Kimerling. Daniel is no slouch, having worked at places like the Center for Strategic and International Studies. So I was surprised to get a a Facebook IM out of the blue from him. It ran like this:

Daniel: yo Mike, got a min?
Me: not really
Daniel: how are ya Mike, ahh I just hooked up my phone!!
Me: why?
Daniel: u like ring tones? this place is giving away 25 ring tones for today only. [site name deleted]
Me: ah, you’ve been hacked. bye!
Daniel: they got all the best artist, newest stuff out they send right to your phone, Felix is actually calling me right now lol brb

Now, this is not the kind of IM convo you have with an analyst, so clearly his account had been hacked in some way.

But this seems to be happening more and more, unless I’m mistaken.

Has it happened to you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.