Common Sense, Dancing

You may have heard my emails and such were hacked. I’m still traumatized by the experience, and the trust has been destroyed between my PC and me. So I decided to join the young, hip kids…and I bought an iMac yesterday. I think I may love it, but I’m still not sure because I’ve got so much to try to pry out of the old PC — it’s making me very nervous to think about leaving it behind as I march off into the New World of Mac. I’m so nervous, in fact, I’ve got the PC up and running next to the sexy new Mac. (Trust may be gone, but it’s all I’ve known for so long…how do I begin again with someone something new?)

First, I must say those people at Apple have the design thing down. If only everything in my world were this sleek and clean (myself included). This computer is gorgeous. And when I finally disconnect my PC, the amount of space I’ll have on my desk will be crazy. I might actually be able to use the desk for something other than holding small bundles of papers to be filed. However, I remain perplexed by the mysteries of the Mac operating system. (So much so, I don’t even know what it’s called.) Why will it not recognize my external hard drive? My life would be so much simpler if they all could just get along. I have a date with the boys at my local Apple store — I hope to be learned by the end of the week. (Ok, more learned. Ok, less ignorant.)

My iTunes remain trapped in the external hard drive. This isn’t so bad — it’s only upwards of 6,000 songs (you do the math). The thing is, I do know how to move it back to the C drive so it can be transferred to iMagical — the problem is, I’m of the “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…” mentality (or “once burned, twice shy,” choose your cliché). The only reason iTunes is on an external hard drive in the first place is that *I* moved it. It would stand to reason that *I* can move it back, right?

Well, maybe the old me. The new me has had enough technology in the past 6 weeks to last a lifetime. I’m fatigued. (I’d use the phrase “battle weary” but there’s been no one shooting at me, so I’ll refrain from the overly melodramatic. I’ll stay *this side* of melodramatic.) I’ve registered a domain; left wordpress.com for another host; crashed the blog; lost my index file (whatever that is); found it again; resurrected the blog; changed the theme; messed around with code when I had no business doing so; been hacked; survived the hack; secured one account and fought with Google about another; opened a third email account; provided a government ID to Facebook to confirm, Yes, it’s me; spent hours and hours figuring out who needed to know the new me is now hotmail and not yahoo or gmail (and I’m still not done).…The most impressive thing about this list is that we all must keep in mind I understood only about 50% of what I was doing. Thank goodness I’m only messing around on a computer and, oh yes, parenting four children. Imagine if I was in charge of FIFA’s referees, the Gulf cleanup, or the Israeli blockade. Yikes.

And it’s only the end of June, people.

It’s been a week since my two email accounts, my Facebook account, and the gmail accounts of my children were all hijacked. I, or one of my children, probably clicked on a link that installed some kind of keystroke malware in the PC, allowing some fine citizen of Nigeria (not confirmed, but if the malware fits…) to enter into all six accounts. There’s really no way to know how the malware made it in, but I suspect it was my fault — during my “pull down the blog put it back up and add some need apps to the page” frenzy, I probably clicked somewhere I shouldn’t have. Seems like things have calmed down. Here are some things I learned:

1. People are inherently good. I knew this, but was reminded of it when friends I hadn’t really talked to in years either called, texted or otherwise reached out to make sure I hadn’t been mugged in Wales and needed cash. Thank you. (And to those of you who ignored my “pleas” — well, I’m not sure what that says about us!)
2. I feel sick when I realize that this Asshat IM’d with my friends on FB and Yahoo. The hack was one thing. The “impersonation” was another. Talk about having b^*$%. Wow.
3. Trying to re-establish your identity is very tricky in this Internet age. Asshat HackerMan changed all the identifying information — as much as he could, anyway — on all the hijacked accounts. It took several calls to Yahoo!‘s support center to get the account (finally) terminated for good. It took a government ID to get my FB account back up. Those are the good guys. As for Google.…
4. Google is dead to me. This corporation, with all its arguably great apps like Calendar, has *no* telephone support for its customers. This, combined with the fact that they leave all the “security” questions visible on the accounts — ripe for the changing — means that I (and my kids) have no way to prove who we are. Our security questions have all been changed. Google wants us to fill out a “form” that tells them our accounts have been compromised, and one of the verification questions is “what is the month/day/year that you created the account” with them. Can anyone tell me the M/D/Y they opened their current email account? I couldn’t, and thus none of the four gmail accounts were returned to our control –and we have no recourse.
5. When you call Google, the receptionist acts like a robot, saying over and over “I’m only authorized to give you the contact information security.google.com” — even when you throw a small hissy fit at her. (She’s very good — I can’t imagine how many call like mine she gets every day.)
6. The FBI agent I spoke with in Newark was lovely. But ultimately of little help with Google or with collaring Asshat HackerMan. A friend’s company had brought in the FBI agent to talk with them about Internet security, so she gave me the agent’s number. He was kind, and sympathetic and reassuring, but couldn’t do much for me at all. Basically, this hacker-scam is old news.
7. You have no idea how many places have your old email address. Keep a piece of paper next to your bed so that when you can’t sleep at night you can write down all the ones you remember (and won’t recall in the shiny light of morning).
8. Don’t use the folders on your email service for any kind of storage. I lost tons of emails about my children’s schools, my volunteer work, my travel, my blog administration, and oh yes, all the passwords for my children’s accounts (like Club Penguin, etc.). They were in a folder called “Passwords.” Really, how dumb can I be??
9. Did I mention Google is dead to me? It is now to be known as “The Multi-Billion-$-Corporation-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” I won’t even use the word g%^&* anymore as a verb. Instead, I will simply “search” something. Even changed my phone — no more Droid platform for me.

And just for your information, if I ever need cash, I’ll call you. Just sayin’.