On 23 December, friended my livejournal; on 29 December, did as well, and the following day so did and . (Yes, I am that obsessive, and check ‘s page every day.)

All five user info pages for these accounts were conspicuously blank. They had all friended the same few dozen people, including . There was nothing of substance on any of their user pages except that one had a link to a “gay love story”, which isn’t my thing. (Don’t go looking for the link to the “gay love story” site. Wait until you’ve finished reading this post.)

Well, I thought nothing of it. But then this week, we’ve all become aware of Livejournal’s change of policy owing to a newly discovered “security flaw”; and thanks to linking to this Washington Post blog entry, I have realised that this was all part of an attempt by the hackers to crack my account, along with all the others. The “gay love story” site is thus part of this plan, and somehow (I suppose) looking at it must enable the hackers to steal the cookies with your livejournal login details.

(See? I told you not to go looking for the link to the “gay love story” site. If you did, and you spent any time at all on it, you probably have to log out of livejournal, expire all your cookies, and change your password.)

So there we are. Mystery explained with a little bit of drama added.