How To Protect Your Homeschool From Hijacking

Right before Christmas my HomeschoolSanity Instagram account was hacked. You may wonder what that has to do with you. This is the Homeschool Sanity Show, the episode where I explain what happened and how my experience can help you protect not just your social media accounts but your homeschool and life from hijacking. Sponsor Finding a math curriculum that works for your family can be a challenge! With CTCMath, all of your kids from K-12 can learn at their own pace with one family subscription. That's right! With a CTCMath membership, you have access to all grades and lessons, which means your children can work at whatever level is best for them. Whether your kid needs to catch up, keep up, or move ahead, with CTCMath they can finally understand math and work at their own pace. CTCMath is offering listeners a half-price discount plus a bonus 6 months when you register for a 12-month membership. Yep. That means you have access to a complete online homeschool math curriculum for all your kids for 18 months! Protect Your Homeschool Life from Hijacking If you clicked on my stories for Homeschool Sanity for Instagram during Christmas week, you may wonder why I'm obsessed with cryptocurrency, bragging about the Mercedes I bought with my profits, and using a lot of y'all's in the captions. My account was hacked. There appeared to be no way for me to get it back. Instagram does not have email, chat, or phone support. Instead, a broken autoresponder was my only option for restoring access, and much to my disappointment, I did not get a Christmas miracle of suddenly getting it back by the 25th. How I Was Hijacked How did this happen? I wish I could say that I did everything right. But I did not. In fact, that's why I'm sharing this episode. Because there are a number of things I did wrong. I made some embarrassingly stupid moves. I'm sad to say it isn't the first time. It was the first time I lost a social media account to a hacker, yes. But not the first time I've made choices that made it easy for the enemy to hijack my life. I have learned a lot from these experiences, however, that I want to share with you in the hopes that your social media and your homeschool will be safe from hijackers. Unmanaged Emotions The first reason my Instagram account was hijacked is because I had emotions I hadn't managed. In my case, it was guilt. I had contacts with two people the day my account was hijacked who wanted money from me. My family and I had been generous with them in the past. I owed them nothing. In fact, they have a history of manipulation. But because they are still poor, I felt some guilt about not helping them. Later that day a woman, who had wanted to sell me makeup in the past, direct-messaged me on Instagram. I looked at her request that I vote for her as an ambassador as well as the fact that I had never purchased makeup from her and guess what I felt? Guilt. If I had done some truth journaling or some chatting with my husband about the guilt I was feeling earlier in the day, it would have been managed. I never would have been vulnerable to this request. Guilt isn't the only unmanaged emotion that can result in a hijacking, though. Fear and anger are two others. Moses let anger at an Egyptian who was beating a fellow Israelite lead him to kill the man. He then had to leave Egypt in fear for his life. We can all think of foolish things we've done out of fear and anger that were not managed properly. Distractions The second way I opened myself up to the hijacking of...