Fortunately, I had good anti-virus software (TrendMicro), and a brain. I got an e-mail aptly described at Snopes that had all appearances of coming from the Central Intelligence Agency.
They even managed to fake out my Outlook to think it was from a CIA 'gov' domain. Some obviously hinky shit was the fact that it wasn't addressed to my hate-mail address but to an 'e-user' at my hatemail address's domain. It had the subject line about me visiting over thirty illegal web sites.
Puu-Leeze. First off, I've visited hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites in my incarnation as a person with internet access. For all I know, most of them are 'illegal.' Chances are, if they don't manage to break a rule in the United States (such as flagrant copyright violations, obscenity, etc.), they probably break a law somewhere (North Korea comes to mind). Not that I'm under the authority of the North Korean government. But then, the 'Nigerian' assheads running scams aren't subject to U.S. law except that we have an army that could bog itself down in an invasion of Nigeria, where North Korea would bog down if the only tried to invade Hawaii.
For the record, I'm not in favor of invading Nigeria. I reserve the right to personally invade Hawaii as a winter refuge from the Alaskan resort I don't have...
Anyway, there was a time when I was excited and amused by the pornographic aspect of the internet. I'd type in domains I didn't think anyone would be vulgar enough to register. Yep, they were all 'taken,' and by people with really bad taste in porn.
I remember my first impression was that if alien civilizations were monitoring the internet as a way of judging Earth, it would be similar to the effect of a European seeking lost tribes in the heart of an African jungle, who comes to a clearing to discover natives who have never seen a white man. What are these natives doing, unaware they are being watched? A circle-jerk.
The period where this excited and amused me lasted roughly three hours. A good three hours, but since there's a finite number of perversions the world has to offer and I wasn't willing to give anyone any credit card numbers, I got bored pretty quick.
Incidentally, there's an 'adult' dating service I get spam from despite my best efforts to get off their list. I don't know how I got 'on' their list, but it must be some data-mining that got done before the three programs I run to thwart such picked it up. I think my efforts to remove myself from their list only cemented me there as an actual e-mail box. I don't know where they got the name of my town but these emails come saying that a bunch of sexually irresponsible twenty-somethings in my area want to meet me and/or me and my spouse or gay lover. It occurred to me that, in a town of roughly 12,000 people, it was unlikely that a low-rent dating service would attract enough people to fill one email, let alone a series.
Then I noticed something. These 'women' who supposedly want to meet me (no thanks), could I possibly know them? What if it was a neighbor on my street? I could suck my teeth and think, 'Whore!' without ever saying a word.
Remember the John Cheever story about the big radio? I got to thinking the porno/escort spam might include a neighbor. So I looked closer.
No class, I know. Sue me. It's not illegal, even if the CIA spam was legit, the CIA has no domestic authority and I've very, very domestic. The only foreign country I ever visited was New York City. And that's not really a foreign country, that's a different planet.
Looking closer, these spam-biotic panderers got the town name right from whatever data-mining they were able to do, but not the state.
They were offering me neighbors from a town I've not only never been to, but in a state I've never visited. Over 1,000 miles away.
Very long way to say 'just say no' to the 'Steven Allison' who works for both the CIA and FBI and who really just wants to put an annoying worm into your PC. Even if you visited over 30 'illegal' sites, so what? Are you the victim of 30 obscenity violations?
The bigger question is, who is 'Steven Alison?' If you had an adequate database of high school bullies and bad college room-mates, I bet even money you'd find the virus writer with just the name, 'Steven Allison.' As much as I'd like to give virus writing hackers .45 caliber retroactive abortions, as much as I'd like to think I don't understand them, I have to think that a guy who would write a worm, virus or other unnecessary plague on the computer-addicted public, he couldn't just happen, right? Right? I mean, computer virus hackers are worse than cannibalistic serial killers...
1 comment:
Remember the John Cheever story about the big radio? I got to thinking the porno/escort spam might include a neighbor. So I looked closer.
I have whole little fictional lives created for my neighbors (one asshead in particular who, living alone, leaves *all* his lights on *all* the time, nor has he met up with the lovely invention called “curtains”. Confrontationist that I am, I start leaving ‘you are an idiot’ notes in his mailbox. He’s better now.) and those that I eerily see on a regular basis (like bloody almost-daily, for even though I try not to leave for work at exactly the same time (having no fixed hours is part of the job’s beauty) I still fall into some circadian rhythm and see many of the same folks).
But one does wonder, with some many little girlies parading their wares (or non-wears) around on this here ‘net, they have to be just ‘normal folk’ mixed in among us. So while I may have some bizarre, quasi-erotic fantasy life ‘written’ about what the girl that prepares my sushi may do in her off hours…I just hope she washed her hands.
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