Security?? For me or From me?

Just spent several hours locked out of most of my accounts because I wanted to share a bit of good news on my blog!  I must confess that after changing passwords on several accounts so I could get to his site, I have forgotten what the good news was!  Not only have I forgotten the good news, but I have forgotten all the passwords and I rather doubt that when I get through posting this, that I will give a big rat's patootie!

Life was so simple when I first ventured into the blogging arena!  But now, I find my desk covered with notes I have written myself, giving myself little hints on how to get into my account.  I must admit, my life was sure a lot simpler back  when I  was stupid and no one wanted to steal my identity.  Right now I do not even want my identity!

When I first ventured into this world of secret words and stuff I signed in to everything with "password".  Worked for me and no one stole my identity.  I could not imagine why anyone would want to be me!  Hell!  I did not even want to be me.  As life in the world of secret passwords began to take on it's own life, my passwords became more and my attention span became shorter.  It was not long before I hated the computer and all it's demands for longer and more complicated passwords.  Gone were the days when one password would open any program.

Last night I got on to pay a bill.  It should have been a 3 minute job.  Needless to say, it did not end up that way.  They insisted I change my password (in case it had been compromised).  That having been done I then had to tranfer money from my bank account to the bill I was paying.  Then I had to change the password on the bank account.  

Now, I am going to post this.  In the good old days I would just add a few labels , state my location and then hit the publish button.  Hopefully this will publish and I can hit another key and it will appear on facebook.  

The sad part is that I do not even remember at this time what I wanted to say to all of you.  I know it was important, but that is all I remember.  

So, until we meet again, Happy Trails and all that.  May the wind be at your back and the road rise to meet you.  The password for today is totalconfusion!!!!

Peace!

Well, my eyes were open very wide!

You know I sell on eBay, right?  And you know I run a lot of junk through there, right?  Earlier in the week I had listed a Minolta 35 mm camera on the auction with a starting price of $4.99.  Well imagine my surprise when I popped over there to check on my auctions and found I had not listed a Minolta at $4.99, but rather a Leica digital 16 mega pixel and the starting price was $4,000.00.  

Now my little mind alternates between forgetfulness and  worrying about forgetfulness.  What in the world had I been thinking.  I quickly clicked on the item thinking perhaps some one else's items were inadvertently thrown in my store.  No.  There it was and the Seller was loumercer3, power seller, 1080 feedback, bronze star.  I went back to the list and discovered that a cheap bauble for $1.99 was now a set of something for a drum set.  Dead panic.  I immediately called eBay security and learned that this was an account takeover.  Needless to say, I was on the phone with them until I thought my ear would fall off my head.  But they immediately suspended action on my account, removed the items, refunded my listing fees, and then we went through my store item by item to be sure that all the listings in there were mine.  After that I then had the pleasure of changing passwords and security questions.  I did thank my lucky stars that no damage was done and that I caught it very early.  (And people wonder why I hang out on this computer!)

Now, this brings up the rest of the scenario.  Say I had not caught that.  First I would have paid a very high insertion fee for this $4,000.00 camera.  Then say it sold, I would have $4000.00 deposited in my account.  Of course, when I did not mail the camera to the fellow who just gifted me with $4000.00,  I would be out of compliance and in big doodoo with big Mama eBay.  No doubt they would jerk the money back, sue me for the fees and there would go my stellar career as an eBay top seller.  Which leads me up to my big question here;

No doubt this is what is called a hacker, but why?  What did he/she get out of this little intrusion into my life.  Apparently they have more time on their hands then I do.  I squeeze time out to do my listings.  Course the Minolta that they altered is gone now and that one will need to be completely rewritten.  May be able to work that in Monday.  The thing is I will be busy the rest of the morning changing passwords on everything that has a password.  Damn jerk!

I love my computer and I love the ease with which I can dance around the Internet, buy stuff, talk to people in other lands far away, look up information, and just all the good things, but don't I hope that someone invents a program that the next time someone tries to access my information, it just fries their computer.  Oh, that would be ideal!  Especially if there were a camera to record their face as it happened.  If someone is smart enough and determined enough to go to all the work of getting into my account they should be clever enough to do that.

Ok, done for the day.  I am off to alter pin numbers, passwords, and whatever else.  Have a good one and be safe out there!