For several days not that long ago, Jordan Reid's site, ramshackleglam.com, did not belong to her. She got it back, but only after the involvement of fifty or so employees of six different companies, middle-of-the-night conferences with lawyers, FBI intervention, and what amounted to a massive sting operation. Here's her story.  Written by Jordan Reid: https://twitter.com/ramshackleglam Read by Abbey Rennemeyer: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn Original article: https://fcc.im/2EA3OjL Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript:  For several days not so long ago, RamshackleGlam.com — the domain name that I have owned and operated since March of 2010 — did not belong to me, but rather to a man who goes by the name “bahbouh” on an auction website called Flippa, and who was attempting to sell off the site to the highest bidder (with a “Buy It Now” price of $30,000.00). He promised the winner my traffic, my files, and my data, and suggested that I was available “for hire” to continue writing posts (alternatively, he was willing to provide the winner with “high-quality articles” and “SEO advice” to maintain the site’s traffic post-sale). I learned that my site was stolen on a Saturday. Three days later I had it back, but only after the involvement of fifty or so employees of six different companies, middle-of-the-night conferences with lawyers, FBI intervention, and what amounted to a sting operation that probably should have starred Sandra Bullock instead of…well…me. Of course I’ve heard of identity theft, and of cyber hacking, but honestly, my attitude towards these things was very much “it could never happen to me.” And even if it did…I didn’t exactly understand why it was such a huge deal. Couldn’t you just explain to people what had happened, prove who you were, and sort it all out? We live in such a highly documented world, it seemed completely impossible to me that someone could actually get away with pretending to be someone else with any real consequences beyond a few phone calls and some irritation. It’s much, much worse — more threatening, more upsetting, and more difficult (if not impossible) to fix — than I’d ever imagined. I found out about the hacking from my father. His friend Anthony (who runs a web development and consulting company called ThoughtBox) had been surfing around on Flippa and had — in an impossibly lucky coincidence — noticed that my site was up for auction, with what appeared to be a highly suspicious listing. Suddenly, I remembered the email I had gotten the day before — an email that I had disregarded as spam — from someone “interested in the purchase” of my “weblog.” I remembered the notification from YouTube that someone had accessed my account from a different location — a notification I had ignored, assuming that I had logged in on a mobile device or that my husband had accidentally logged into my account instead of his own. But even after I saw the listing, I didn’t panic: this seemed like something that could be fixed with a couple of emails. Except the auction site was located in Australia and didn’t appear to have a phone number, and when I sent an email with a scanned ID and proof of ownership what I got back was a form letter. And when I called HostMonster, the site I pay to operate my website, I discovered that I was no longer the owner of my site: someone had used their email confirmation system to authorize the transfer of my domain name into a private account at GoDaddy (another web registrar service of whom I’m also a client). Why is this a big deal? If you have a business that depends on a URL, you understand why this was such upsetting news: With control over my website’s domain name, a hacker would be able to take the site down, or redirect it elsewhere. Further, it was later verified that the hacker had control over all of the site’s content, as well; he could have just rerouted everything I’ve ever written to an