Email Hackers--You Are Not My Friend

If you've ever received an email from Derek or me, then you probably received an email last Saturday afternoon that was apparently not from us. (We are not selling prescription drugs on the side, seriously people!) We were sitting at Cracker Barrel having a nice family dinner when I noticed that there were a bunch of failure notices in my email. I knew immediately what this meant, that someone had hacked into our email. Our email had been compromised. So we had to get the Coca Cola Cake to go which is so unfortunate, because it's the entire reason we went to Cracker Barrel.

Derek and I were frustrated and angry...why? Well, first of all, because some of you might actually think that we're selling Viagra on the side, but more importantly we just felt violated. We came home and tried to email everyone in our address book to tell them not to click on the link. But our email doesn't allow us to do that as protection from hackers. You can only email 20 people at a time and we have over 700 contacts in our email, so it just didn't happen. Derek changed almost all of our passwords and made them so complicated that he has to sign in for me so that I can read my email because I just can't remember that complicated of a password. He informed me this morning that you're not supposed to write your password down anywhere, but if you're relying on my memory, seriously we're in trouble. I have two debit cards and I can barely remember both of the pins to two cards.

What's frustrating is that my husband works in IT (information technology aka computers). So, we have all kinds of safeguards on our computers (did you read the last paragraph about the new passwords?) And so, it is shocking that this would happen to us. Our kids don't have open access to the computer and we don't allow them to randomly sign up for things.

But there's almost always a spiritual lesson that can be learned with anything that happens in our lives and immediately God had me thinking about this. I thought about how we put up safeguards in our lives...safeguards to protect our marriages and to keep our computers free of nasty images. We have locks on our doors and smoke detectors in every room. We have a safe for important documents. Some of these are spiritual safeguards, some of them are just wise decisions. But Satan, the enemy, he looks for any spot of weakness. Somehow some person who has entirely too much time on his/her hands found a way into our email. Don't you think Satan is watching our every move looking for that weakness in our lives. The Bible tells us that he prowls about like a lion seeking someone to devour. He comes to steal, kill and destroy. I think we need to wake up and be aware. No marriage is safe. No friendship is safe. No parenting style is fool proof. Satan is looking to destroy relationships and Jesus' name in the process. We need to be on the offensive instead of the defensive. We need to be proactive instead of having to be reactive once our family is falling apart.

What steps do you need to take today to safeguard your marriage, your friendships, your relationships with family and friends? What things do you need to put in place so that you're always aware and reminded that the enemy is just around the corner ready to pounce and attack at any moment? The battle is waging...are you prepared to fight for your marriage and family?