Back Up Plan

"The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it. " ~ Bill Nye

Here's a question for my blog readers: If you lost your cell phone tomorrow and needed to call someone, would you know any phone numbers?

Scary, isn't it? I don't know about you, but I could call my parents' house and my brother's cell phone. That's it. Out of the 400 contacts in my phone, I know two numbers!

What's the point of this? Well my mom lost all of her contacts in her email address book yesterday when her account got hacked. It's actually a funny story (although she's not quite to the point of seeing the humor....) as to how it happened. Apparently the hackers sent an email to all of her contacts saying that my mom was stranded in London and needed $2500. Now, I find this funny for two reasons. First, my mom would NEVER not have enough money with her on a trip. Seriously, when we were kids, if we needed to take $100 bucks with us on a trip, she'd insist we take $250 to be safe. She's crazy like that....and also about packing enough clothes, but that's another blog. Second, my mom would never be in London. She HATES to fly and the thought of her flying across the Atlantic is just hilarious.

Anyway, my whole point is that we all need to back up our information. Today, I printed out all of my email contacts. It took about 3 minutes to do, but I had never though of doing it before. I also have a list of all the contacts in my cell phone in case I lose it.

So...unless you want to start trying to memorize phone numbers, you might think about backing up your info. And, on the bright side, my mom now knows that if she's ever stranded in London, she has lots of friends who are willing to help her (after they confirm the story with a phone call!). She's a lucky lady.