Woof, quite a thanksgiving! The wife and I spent last night with some family friends in the suburbs, where I relentlessly shilled this site to whoever would listen. Times were had, the turkey was excellent, and I somehow even found room for dessert. Heading back home down I-90, I thought to myself about how much tryptophan consumption affects driving ability.
Today we were able to replenish the larder since all the stores were shut down yesterday. Once the groceries were unloaded, it seemed to be a good time to record my thoughts and map out a general concept of what this blog is going to be about.
My primary topic is going to be informational safety and data protection on a low-level view. My hope, as written in my previous entry, is to help educate the public (you) by creating a little give-and-take on the various ways we can keep ourselves safe.
I don’t think it’s wise to advise anybody to hunker down in a bunker with gold bricks and lots of canned goods. Yes, there is danger outside. But we have to level with ourselves how much danger we expose ourselves to on a daily basis. We would not drive cars or design airplanes if we had no interest in exposing ourselves to a little bit of risk at the chance of a much greater reward.
So to start from my favorite place to start:
Speaking as someone whose card data has been stolen (at least) twice, I can attest to the rage we encounter when we get the feeling that we’ve been tailed or taken for suckers. While it’s not quite as brutal as a mugging, it’s much more efficient considering the perspective of the mugger: e-theft limits potential exposure to physical harm for the thief, and, if done right, can open their opportunities available.
The first time my card data was stolen, I was using an Israeli ATM to get shekels for a felafel sandwich that I had planned to enjoy over lunch. A week later, my bank informed me that someone had attempted to use my card number to procure Skype minutes. My card was deactivated to prevent additional use, and I had to go into a physical bank to obtain cash for the next week. This was very annoying but hardly life-ending.
I get the feeling that older people are convinced that some mean character like the Iron Man II antagonist Ivan Vanko is grimly clicking away at a DOS terminal in Russia, plotting to steal their home equity. This is not what cybercrime looks like, even on the level of state-sponsored Russian interference. Those guys don’t care about your suburban home or your bank account. They’re looking to leverage the future of nations, and your average Omaha Joe or Baltimore Jack has little to do with what happens in Ukraine or Syria.
The same thing goes for mall thieves looking to steal your credit card data, although the idea of someone in a Starbucks shoulder-surfing for useful information might be closer to what the government does when they’re looking into cracking the laptop of a wanted felon. The stuff you can do with video these days is wild.
That being said, if you’re worried about people stealing your card information, don’t bother to encase them in RFD-proofed sheeting. That particular product is scammy at best. When people steal your information, it’s at the times when you’re using it in good faith. Like when you put your card data into a local gas station whose internal mechanisms have become horribly compromised.
That was the second time I got scammed. Someone attempted to purchase $400 worth of groceries with my information. I was lucky that it was not a purchase that looked normal for me: if they’d splurged at Target, they likely would have slipped right by the systems that are designed to detect such malfeasance. Again, my card was cancelled and was unavailable for my use for a while.
But we all survived. And we will continue to do so.