The Big Hack and Some Interesting News

Sorry there was no posting yesterday, and sorry to those who clicked here thinking I'd be blogging about my shortcomings as a writer.  On Friday at 6:47 AM  many of you received an e-mail message from my AOL account. I don't know what the message line said, but if you opened it there was a website you could click on which seemed to lead to an online drugstore. Don't know what would happen if you actually did click on the link, but chances are you would have downloaded a worm that could have stolen passwords or data on your computer. Luckily, I got a call from a friend and e-mails from folks I hadn't heard from in several years telling me of the problem. I quickly discovered that someone had "hacked" the address book on my AOL e-mail. I sent out a message with a title line telling folks not to open e-mail from e1620 and set about tracking down the problem.

AOL was my first Internet service provider back in the dark ages of 600 baud dial-up modems. I'd stuck with them over the years for sentimental reasons as they declined from a major player in the field to an internet backwater that still charged for mail service. After 15 years I was receiving more SPAM than e-mails, had limited storage space so incoming messages were blocked, and got next to no special features. Ultimately, in 2010, I started to make the move to gmail only keeping the AOL account to catch anyone who I hadn't migrated to gmail. I must say that when I called AOL I got great customer service--from two people whose lines somehow got crossed when I called. The first five minutes of the service call was devoted to getting the automated calling system and then the second person off the line. Not a confidence builder for me! When that was taken care of the pleasant, non-outsourced young lady quickly took care of my problem-it seemed like it wasn't her first time at the rodeo. All that she did was change my password  and tell me to use the spam message button on the offending hack which would file a report at AOL (I'd already done that). No suggestions about anything else.

Subsequently, I've learned that AOL gets more than its share of break-ins by hackers. I would have much preferred to be part of the "I'm imprisoned in Switzerland, send money" scam than the more insidious and less glamorous one I was involved in. Hey, maybe we were hacked by the FBI or the NSA for that blog about Whitey Bulger. Let me know if any of you who weren't already on the terrorist watch list have been added in the last couple of days!

Still, luckily for the denizens of my AOL address book, we seemed to have dodged a bullet as long as no one opened the link. The hacker breached AOL's security and did not infect my computer according to the virus scan I ran. I'm running more scans today. My computer was also protected by basic firewalls provided by both my browser and by Verizon. I've deleted all the addresses from my AOL address book and deleted all messages as of Friday. I've abandoned the site, but left it open to serve as a trap site for future scams. Goodbye dear old AOL, you were a good friend in your time!

If you receive any email from e1620@aol.com do not open it. You can always reach me at the Curiosity Shop by posting a comment. Folks who belong in my address book will be hearing from me shortly.

Part of the good news that sprang from this disaster was the installation of Firefox 5.0 which just happened to arrive on Friday as well. This open source browser already has a number of cool features, but my favorite change is that my beloved steampunk browser theme has been updated. Left out of Firefox 4, my poor browser went from looking like the control panel of a Victorian gas factory to a simple Walnut paneled study. Now my switches and iron grill work have returned. More practically the folks that develop Firefox have found a way to make the browser even more useful. Samfind an add-on, allows me to scan through the news feeds of chosen sites and post the news in a narrow panel on the side of my browser. There, at the National Geographic RSS, I discovered that this year's 11 most endangered US Historic Sites were announced three days ago. This listing helped save our own Shovel Shops so you might want to check it out. I'd post a link, but hey, let's wait a few days.