Confessional from Hacker Hell
Well, it's finally over: a long nightmarish week of life in a cloud-computing thunderhead, Cloud 8 1/2 as opposed to Cloud Nine, a dark cloud which, if there is a silver lining, it's strictly of the organizational variety. The Chinese have a term for making a mistake like I did: Loss of Face. In my case for falling flat on my shoulda-known-better ass for the oldest phishing scam there is: the "Lost in the Wilderness Send Money" scam. No, I didn't send money. I just asked everybody I know, ever met, ever emailed, or did business with to send money. Lots of it. Luckily, nobody else fell for it, although one friend nearly did. Looking back, the Hacker-spammer-phisherman knew exactly which buttons to get me to push. Most disturbingly, I have long known better than to fall for internet scams, other than a car purchase/theft which I easily averted. Yet there is a weakness millions of us vulnerable humans seem to be afflicted with: a willingness, even a need, to trust. T