It's that time of year when the world is in love (with Christmas shopping. We're apparently skipping Thanksgiving this year.) Naturally, the thieves are trying to get an early start on grabbing those stocking stuffers, and seem to be looking to stuff their stockings with gifts purchased by defrauding our BB&T credit card. Fortunately, our bank has excellent fraud protection. Customer service notified my wife and I less than 24 hours after the abnormal transactions began to appear on our account. By mutual agreement BB&T canceled that compromised credit card number so no further charges would get approved, but not before our identity thieves managed to order Walmart gift cards and cell phones through an online account. The customer service representative assured us that we wouldn't be held responsible for the fraudulent charges, but nevertheless I was perturbed by the idea someone successfully used my name to steal from a business that heavily discounts merchandise to benefit the customers. Not to mention, credit card holders are forced to pay higher interest rates because the credit card companies can't afford to eat the losses, either. These thieves were using my identity to steal from you. We all pay higher prices at Walmart to compensate for the losses to shoplifting. We all pay higher interest rates on our credit cards--not only to mitigate losses due to bankruptcies and failure to pay by the cardholder, but also because of fraud. As a result, I'm not a big fan of liars or thieves. But in our case, the story has a happy ending. Walmart emailed to … [Read more...]
A quick question for readers
In case you've been wondering who pays me and how often, lately I've been wondering the same thing, too. After 12 years of faithful service, my van died and I had to buy another car, which means a new car payment and more expensive insurance coverage. This month went from bad to brutal after my dog was poisoned by eating treated grass (after eating a thousand-dollar emergency vet bill, she's absolutely fine and acts like nothing ever happened) and two days after that, the washer and dryer both had to be replaced, to the tune of another two grand. Sorry if this reads like whining, but I felt kind of like this guy here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d75rXHWU854 So, why am I telling you about my problems? Well, for the past eight years, I've been reticent to ask for contributions or donations from readers to support this website. I thought people who like to read my articles and blogs would also want to buy my books and novels. In retrospect, that assumption proved incorrect. It turns out that people who read my books probably don't read my blog, and vice versa. I either need to figure out how to sell a lot more books, monetize the website, or (gasp) get a "day" job. For the next several days, I've placed a small, temporary PayPal "Donate" button on my home page under my signature. I'm looking into creating a Patreon account as a more long term opportunity for readers to show their appreciation for my work. If you want to show your support for my blog, your financial contribution will be greatly appreciated. Even if you can't afford to spare a dollar … [Read more...]
Internet extortion
Got a pretty scary email early this morning...it alarmed me at first glance, at least for about two seconds or so. Three seconds, tops. The ominous sounding extortion threat read as follows: Hello!Do not mind on my illiteracy, I am from India.We loaded the malicious program onto your system.After that I stole all individual information from your OS. Moreover I had slightly more compromising.The most interesting evidence which I received- its a record with your masturbation.I set virus on a porn page and after you downloaded it. As soon as you chose the video and clicked on a play, my virus instantly downloaded on your OS.After downloading, your camera shoot the video with you masturbating, moreover software saved exactly the video you masturbated on. In next week my malicious software captured all your social media and work contacts.If you want to erase all the compromising evidence- pay me 470 euro in Bitcoins.I provide you my Btc number - 13UEudUHf3yzJm9791w7qRH2edooCpoyWY You have 20 hours to go since now. When I receive transaction I will eliminate the evidence in perpetuity. Otherwise I will send the tape to all your contacts.Wilks Drone -- "Think twice extortion email" Sorry, but I will mind the illiteracy as well as the stupidity, because I don't like being threatened or blackmailed by prevaricating wankers from India. The timing of the email was admittedly a little worrisome because my laptop had lost the internet connection while I was feeding the dogs, and it took a few seconds to figure out how to restore order, but that seemed to be Comcast, not my … [Read more...]
Twitter and me
About six months ago, I deleted my Twitter account. Once I realized I had been shadow banned merely for expressing an conservative controversial opinion about abortion, I just removed my account without any fanfare. What would be the point of "tweeting" a complaint if nobody but me could read it? The beauty of a shadow ban is the victim may not realize the ban is in effect for a while and may waste time and energy writing comments that no one but them can see. It's a lot like accidentally pressing the mute button in the middle of a phone conversation and failing to realize the other person can no longer hear a word you're saying. To be perfectly honest, I'd never liked the constraint of limiting my thoughts to 140 characters or less, so I decided to just delete my Twitter account and move on with my life. The only thing about the whole situation that still bothers me is the idea of some anonymous coward monitoring and then censoring my speech, and being powerless to stop it. But what other choice do I have? There aren't any grounds for a lawsuit. Yet according to Twitter's CEO, the corporate culture at his company is so toxic that conservative employees don't feel safe to express their personal opinions at work. Dorsey claims he doesn't think that's right or fair, but he's done absolutely nothing to stop it.All he would have to do is threaten to suspend or fire any employee for discriminating against users of their service or their fellow employees for political reasons, and it would stop. With his public denial of a strong liberal bias as the dominant … [Read more...]
