Pondering the internet and personal security and such…

 

Thursday brought news reports that there had been a data breach at Target Stores… and 40 million credit card and ATM card numbers, with owners names had been compromised.  We shop at Target, and likely our card(s) are included.   I spent part of yesterday reviewing back statements looking for unauthorized charges…  so far I haven’t found any… I am considering changing the pin number on the most commonly used ATM card…   We are thinking about Lifelock or similar service… 

This was a pretty sophisticated attack… by professionals… On the news commentators and experts are suggesting this is not an unusual or unique attack… this instead is business as usual in the brave new world.  So while on line looking at back statements (yes, we bank at least partially on line), I received the following…

From: Hesk Desk cva-summerjazz@ahk.nl

Subject: TERMINATION OF YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT IN 24 HOUR

Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2013 12:36:38 +0100 (CET)

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

An Attempt has been made to login from a new computer. For the security of
your account, You will not be able to send or receive email. Kindly copy
the link and paste on your Internet Explorer web browser and fill the form
http://www.djhenderson.ch/ON/use/adminhelpdesk10/form1.html
Do not ignore this message to avoid termination of your web mail account.
 Web mail Administration

I get a couple of emails like this a week… this one was fun because they miss-spelled “Help” in the title… generally a pretty good hint that it might have originated from somewhere overseas…    The email address belongs to the Amsterdam School of the Arts…  The time stamp, (CET), is “Central European Time) none of which makes sense since my internet provider is located in Seattle…  Even better, the link for the form to be filled out has a Swiss web address….  And the link to the form is broken…  Likely reported by someone else and the site taken down…   

Beyond this, I get a phone call a week or so, from someone identifying themselves as Microsoft saying they have detected a virus on my computer…  and asking me to let them access it remotely…  Sometimes I play with them… I tell them I don’t have a windows computer…  they keep telling me I have a virus… Last time I ended the car by telling the other party “you sir are a F$%#@g liar” and hanging up…  This is a well known scam…

Aren’t computers fun….