About two months ago, 20-year-old anthropology junior Felicia Gasca received a phone call from her grandpa, asking why she had emailed him advertisements for Viagra.
"He made a joke of it," Gasca said, "but I was embarrassed."
Her grandpa received the advertisements because her personal email was hacked and sending malicious spam without her knowledge.
"If he hadn't called, I wouldn't have even known," Gasca said.
Three in 10 teens and young adults have had their Twitter, Facebook, email or other Internet accounts hacked, according to a new MTV/Associated Press poll. That's double the number reported in 2009.
"The greater the population, the greater the ability to exploit them," said Aaron Thomas, a UF educational technology professor.
Thomas said teens and young adults are more likely to be hacked because they aren't aware of the safety precautions and procedures of the Internet.
For the poll, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Knowledge Networks, under AP's polling unit, interviewed 1,355 people, including people ages 14 to 17 and ages 18 to 24.
Shauna Mackey, a 20-year-old telecommunications junior, had her Facebook profile hacked last spring after someone pretending to be one of her friends messaged her and asked for her email address.
"They said, ‘I have a really big project due and my email's not working, can I use yours?'" Mackey said.
Mackey provided her email address and found out later that day that the person had hacked into her Facebook, messaged her friends, asking for their email addresses and even asked one friend if Mackey had ever sent nude photos of herself.
"I hadn't even spoken to that girl since high school," Mackey said.
To avoid a similar situation, people should protect their account passwords and update their anti-virus software, Thomas said.
Of the people polled, 65 percent of those that were hacked knew who did it. Two-thirds of the people surveyed said they changed the passwords to their Internet accounts after they were hacked, 46 percent altered the email address or username associated with their accounts and 25 percent deleted a social networking profile.
After she was hacked, Mackey changed her email and Facebook passwords but hasn't taken any more security measures since.
"I feel like this happens often," Mackey said. "And I don't have any information on my profile that I'm afraid to share with anyone if they hacked it."
