What I learned after being hacked on social media [PODCAST]

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

“I never thought social media hacking would offer such important reminders and lessons, but here we are.

By the way, I am the first to admit that it’s easy to gloss over phrases and lessons because you’ve heard them a million times before, and we think we know.

But in reality, we merely understand, but do not know. Because if we really knew, then there wouldn’t be the need for the lessons to appear.

So while I would never have wished for this to happen, I am grateful to learn and for this opportunity to “know.”

Have you experienced hacking before? How did you respond? What did you learn from it?”

Cindy Tsai is an internal medicine physician and can be reached on Twitter @cindytsaimd.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “What I learned after being hacked on social media.”

Did you enjoy today’s episode?

Rate and review the show so more audiences can find The Podcast by KevinMD.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out.

Click here to earn 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CME for this episode.

Also available in Category 1 CME bundles.

Powered by CMEfy – a seamless way for busy clinician learners to discover Internet Point-of-Care Learning opportunities that reward AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Learn more at about.cmefy.com/cme-info

Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode with anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Rate and review the show at KevinMD.com/rate. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/follow. Today we welcome back on the show Cindy Tsai. She’s an internal medicine physician. Her latest KevinMD article is “What I learned after being hacked on social media.” Cindy, welcome back to the show.

Cindy Tsai: Thank you for having me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: Now, we’ve had wonderful episodes in the past together, so if you want to hear more from Cindy, just search back to our prior episodes. But I want to get straight into this article, and I want to hear about your story, about your experiences getting hacked on Instagram. Before we do, tell us about your Instagram presence and what it meant to you as a physician.

Cindy Tsai: Sure. So I transitioned from clinical medicine to coaching and speaking and have really been building a presence on social media. My Instagram was definitely an opportunity for me to share content and to connect with followers, friends, and people. So it is a part of my coaching business and also just a representation of who I am online.

Kevin Pho: Now, tell us what kind of content you would post on your Instagram account and how that would help you get clients.

Cindy Tsai: Yeah. So I post content like the blog articles I write regularly, when I’m on podcasts, and also just different types of inspirational and motivational content. I post videos and reels and just different ways to share information with people. Because I focus on helping people manage stress and decrease burnout, I share a lot of different useful tips in that way.

Kevin Pho: Now, where did it place in terms of your overall social media presence? How did it compare to, say, your Facebook presence or your Twitter presence?

Cindy Tsai: So I would say the two primary social media accounts I focus on would be LinkedIn and Instagram. I do have other social media, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but I was primarily focused on LinkedIn and Instagram, even though I do have a presence on the other social media channels as well.

Kevin Pho: So let’s hear more about your story, titled “What I learned after being hacked on social media.” Tell my audience what exactly happened.

Cindy Tsai: Yeah. So I remember just checking my email and then seeing this email from Instagram saying, “The email on your account was changed, and if you didn’t change your email address, you can secure your account here.” I was really confused, because I was like, “Well, what’s going on?” I clicked the link, but it was too late, because the email, the password, everything had already been changed, so I couldn’t log in. I was like, “What’s going on?” You hear about people getting hacked, and you never think that it could happen to you. This was at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., right?

So I tried to contact Instagram. I started googling graciously. I was like, “OK, well, what do you do when your account is hacked?” And then I was going through the whole roller coaster of emotions: being frustrated, angry, sad, confused, all of these things, and just unsure. Then I realized that it was essentially almost impossible to reach somebody in customer service. So I think I was able to really just look at how I was thinking and feeling about things and to kind of figure things out, like, “OK, well, let’s stay calm, right? What do I do first?” X, Y, Z. In the coming days, as I was still not able to get access to my account, I really reflected on the whole experience and came up with the various tips that I shared in the article.

Kevin Pho: So when you went to your account after that email was changed, what did your account look like?

Cindy Tsai: Well, apparently the hacker actually changed the account to a private account, and I hadn’t actually followed myself with another account. I think some people do that, and it’s probably a smart thing to do. So I actually had no idea what my account looked like anymore, because I couldn’t even see it. Thankfully, I had some close friends and family, and I was like, “Hey, my account’s hacked. Let me know what’s going on.” So they would be giving me updates, saying, “Oh, they just posted a story about how you made a lot of money doing crypto and mining.” And I was like, “What’s going on?”

Thankfully, a lot of people who have been following me actually reached out to me too. They were like, “Hey, I think your account is hacked.” But then I think there were also people at the same time who maybe didn’t know me personally who were kind of like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Is she transitioning into finance or something, investing?”

Kevin Pho: So it was 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening. You realize that your account is now private. It’s sending out some strange crypto advice stuff to your followers. You went on Google and obviously couldn’t reach Instagram. Tell me what happened next.

Cindy Tsai: Well, I think a lot of the messages, a lot of the articles, talked about how you can send in requests for verification using selfies and whatever. So I was able to send that in, and then it was essentially just a waiting game of waiting to hear back. What was funny was that I would hear back in a day or two, and they’d be like, “Oh, we can’t verify your selfie.” So I actually had to do it five times, which was kind of frustrating.

But at the same time, I was really able to, well, one of the lessons I think I shared was this idea that attachment creates suffering. For me, it was just learning that, yes, I had spent a lot of time and energy on building my Instagram and social media, but it was my attachment to wanting it back that really created a lot of suffering. So I really reminded myself, “Hey, I can always recreate everything, right? Because it came from me.” It’s just that attachment, an expectation of wanting my account back and all these things, that was really making it even harder on myself. I think it’s a really important lesson just for life in general, right? So often we get attached to things, we want things to be a certain way, and then we get disappointed when things don’t work out. So that was a really good reminder for me.

Kevin Pho: Now, eventually, did you get control back of your account?

Cindy Tsai: I did. After a week-ish, I was able to, thankfully, get access back. I was almost at the point of, you know. And it was frustrating, because I couldn’t even create a new account. It was kind of just at this standstill. But I think the good thing is, because I had these other social media accounts, I had an email list and all these other things, it wasn’t like I was just stuck in this void.

So I think that’s also really important to remember, especially if you are on social media, that you diversify, especially if you’re using social media for your business or something, right? It’s like you, in terms of visibility. So I think diversification is important. We talk about it in investments, right? It’s also true in the sense that you can be on different platforms, you can share different content, and it’s all going to be fine.

Kevin Pho: Yeah, I’d like to reiterate your stance on diversification when it comes to your online presence, because it’s not just being hacked. If you rely, say, on Facebook and they change the algorithm, and suddenly you go to zero followers or get zero visibility, that can really affect your business. So I’m going to second your suggestion of diversifying your online presence. Now, do you have any idea about how the hackers got hold of your account?

Cindy Tsai: No. I mean, I think, because I generally am very mindful of not clicking on random links or things like that. I mean, I feel like in this day and age, there are so many things that we are probably doing that are exposing ourselves. That’s why I brought up two-factor authentication and how I didn’t turn that feature on prior to this. Had it been turned on, which is why I encourage everyone to do that, then there would have been that additional step to verify before, I think, these settings could have been changed.

It’s interesting, because for work, I think we all have two-factor and all the security measures activated and turned on. But then for social media, for me, I was just like, “Oh, it’s social media. It’s not a big deal.” But after this experience, the first thing I did was to turn it on for all my other platforms and accounts, so that it doesn’t happen there too.

Kevin Pho: Did you have to navigate this experience by yourself? Did you have a social media team or a tech team to help you out?

Cindy Tsai: No, I navigated it primarily by myself. I had some people I knew who were in social media or digital marketing and things like that. But it was unfortunate, because I feel like a lot of the things you see online are very much the same. You kind of feel like your hands are tied in some ways, because you can’t reach anybody in customer service. Throughout this whole experience, I never spoke to anybody, whether by phone or chat or anything. It was all just, “Submit this selfie, submit this form, complete this, and then you’ll hear back in one to two days.” So it was definitely frustrating at times, when it’s just like, “Ah,” you feel like you’re isolated and stuck in some ways.

Kevin Pho: Tell me how stressful this whole experience was, especially since your Instagram is connected to your personal business. You mentioned a few ways earlier in this interview about how you handle that stress, but give some advice and tips to those physicians who may be going through a similar story.

Cindy Tsai: Yeah. Well, I think that I was definitely very stressed at the beginning, and it was probably just because everything was such a shock, that it was happening. I really credit the practice of mindfulness and coaching for me to really be able to stay calm soon after and throughout, and to be able to really recognize and reflect on this experience.

One thing I mentioned in the article is this idea of control, and how a lot of times we think we have control over things, but we really don’t. I thought this was a really great reminder that control is an illusion. My efforts at trying to regain access, to get my account back, all these things, we’re trying to basically control, right? It’s like, “Hey, this is my account. This is part of my business. I need this back. I don’t want them to be posting random things and whatever.” But this attempt to gain control was really actually disrupting my own sense of peace.

So I think it’s really, I mean, it’s much easier said than done, especially a lot of times when you’re in this state of panic, emergency, and loss, and whatever fear. But I do think it’s really helpful to remember that at the end of the day, what you can control is your response, right? Are you going to react, or are you going to respond? Are you going to take that moment to just breathe and recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, everything’s going to be fine?

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Cindy Tsai. She’s an internal medicine physician. Her latest KevinMD article is titled “What I learned after being hacked on social media.” Cindy, what are some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Cindy Tsai: So I definitely want to encourage everyone to turn on two-factor authentication on all of your accounts if you haven’t already. I think it’s really important to diversify, as we talked about. And I think, just really try to be present and enjoy whatever you’re doing on social media, whether it’s for business or not. I do think that it’s a way for us to communicate and to reach different people, but it doesn’t replace who you are, in terms of your actual connections with people. So yes, it’s a part of business, but it’s not the whole picture. It’s still important to have a call with someone, to really make those relationships, so that people really get to know you and you get to share your message in a way that feels good to you.

Kevin Pho: Cindy, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

Cindy Tsai: Thank you.

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes