I feel a little better this week, compared to last week, but I'll probably still take it easy this Friday and give you someone else's thing to read, rather than generating content myself. I may end up taking a few more Fridays off and building a buffer that way, and then just running with that. We'll see.
I had an strange encounter with the Internet on Monday morning. I checked my emails, as I tend to, and found an email from an online vendor that I've never used, stating that I'd changed my shipping address on the website. This was extremely worrisome to me, because that particular email has been hacked before, and if that online vendor had my email, what else did they have? Had someone stolen my personal information and ordered a bunch of things on this online store? Was my address compromised? My credit card?
So I investigated... I went to the website, changed the password on the account, logged in, and looked around. To my befuddlement, everything on the account, right down to a credit card and address, was someone elses'. It was just my email on the account, for some reason. But that left me in a weird situation, a stranger having someone's credit card and address on an online vendor. This was uncomfortable for me, so my next step was to fix that.
After making very sure my information was safe and not on the account, I changed the password to something simple. I then texted the phone number attached to the account, explaining the situation, and giving the person the new password. They responded within 10 minutes, thanking me and saying that they'd just closed a case with the vendor, having had their account stolen and a bunch of things bought and shipped elsewhere. They asked for a picture of the email I'd received, which I gave them. And that's all I've heard from them.
It's really odd. The contact information was for someone in New York, so I have no idea how my email address came to live on their account information. It has to have been done deliberately- the email address is 16 characters long, and distinctive (it includes the word "digimodify" which is... not exactly a common dictionary word). But I have no idea why that would be a good idea in some identity-jacker's book.
Anyway, I stepped up the security on that email account, so if this happens again, it's not going to be because some hacker has access to my email.
Beyond that strange incident, there hasn't been a lot exciting to talk about. I saw a couple friends, spent a lot of time at home trying to recuperate, and kept up my exercise routine. Tomorrow I'll be taking my dad to a specialty cheese shop in the area, as well as to an additional place, for a little Father's Day present. We didn't really celebrate on the day of, between it being a Sunday, the cheese shop being closed, and my being absent-minded overall. But he's a good sport and doesn't seem to mind the celebration being a bit later.
I had an strange encounter with the Internet on Monday morning. I checked my emails, as I tend to, and found an email from an online vendor that I've never used, stating that I'd changed my shipping address on the website. This was extremely worrisome to me, because that particular email has been hacked before, and if that online vendor had my email, what else did they have? Had someone stolen my personal information and ordered a bunch of things on this online store? Was my address compromised? My credit card?
So I investigated... I went to the website, changed the password on the account, logged in, and looked around. To my befuddlement, everything on the account, right down to a credit card and address, was someone elses'. It was just my email on the account, for some reason. But that left me in a weird situation, a stranger having someone's credit card and address on an online vendor. This was uncomfortable for me, so my next step was to fix that.
After making very sure my information was safe and not on the account, I changed the password to something simple. I then texted the phone number attached to the account, explaining the situation, and giving the person the new password. They responded within 10 minutes, thanking me and saying that they'd just closed a case with the vendor, having had their account stolen and a bunch of things bought and shipped elsewhere. They asked for a picture of the email I'd received, which I gave them. And that's all I've heard from them.
It's really odd. The contact information was for someone in New York, so I have no idea how my email address came to live on their account information. It has to have been done deliberately- the email address is 16 characters long, and distinctive (it includes the word "digimodify" which is... not exactly a common dictionary word). But I have no idea why that would be a good idea in some identity-jacker's book.
Anyway, I stepped up the security on that email account, so if this happens again, it's not going to be because some hacker has access to my email.
Beyond that strange incident, there hasn't been a lot exciting to talk about. I saw a couple friends, spent a lot of time at home trying to recuperate, and kept up my exercise routine. Tomorrow I'll be taking my dad to a specialty cheese shop in the area, as well as to an additional place, for a little Father's Day present. We didn't really celebrate on the day of, between it being a Sunday, the cheese shop being closed, and my being absent-minded overall. But he's a good sport and doesn't seem to mind the celebration being a bit later.
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