Phishers of Memes

Sometimes, my friends worry me.

I don't mean normal worries, like are they home safe or are they happy or how are their children worries -- those are a normal part of the give and take of friendship.
Lately. I have worried, probably way too much, over how gullible they are to "just for fun" Facebook memes.

It started with the silly holiday names. Mostly they go by initials, but some are poking around for your birthdate. Or someone else's initials, such as your first child's. Or maybe your father's.Those are harmless, for the most part. The phishers are building themselves a "just for fun" reputation.

Once that is achieved, the goal becomes one's birthdate, in all its unedited glory.
You see, on Facebook, many of us are wise enough to not put the year. The day, yeah, but the year is questionable.
Because one of the cues/clues to your credit/financial identity is your full birthdate.

So how old were you in 1969? I can do math enough to know that if you were 11 that means you were born in 1958. And if I can figure it out, believe me, someone smart enough to code can do so in half the time. They may even have a chart.

Now, they -- either the memes or the phishers; you choose -- have become a bit more nosy. Now they have people posting their family tree by last name. I am a who. My dad was a who. His mother was a what. My mother was a why. Her mother was a how.

What is the standard security question for online access to financial accounts?
Mother's maiden name.
BINGO!

You have given them information not only to your accounts, but also to those of your mother and your father, and possibly your grandparents, if you went back another generation.

I have seen where some say, "Yes, but the information is out there anyway. If they want it that bad, they can find it."
True, but why on earth would they go looking when you just hand it to them? If you don't play along, someone else will.
Do you really think they care WHO they defraud? They'll take everybody they can get.

And boy do they get a lot.

Phishers bait their hooks, cast their lines, and plan their next trip.
Already the memes are sneaking in to spell your child's name with the last four letters of your dad's middle name and the first initial of your maiden name.

What will you fall for next?
And who will be to blame when your, or your parents, bank accounts are emptied and the credit cards maxed out?

How fun is that?

The Working World: adapted from Facebook post.

I hate the job.
I hate the hours.
I hate the work.
I have to see straight lines and color variations. I can do neither of those things under the best of circumstances. And they make me wear safety glasses over my glasses -- y'all can maybe guess how exactly helpful it is to have an extra lens over your lenses when already your vision cannot be corrected to 20/20.

Plus my feet hurt, and my back twists (not as part of the job) I have muscle spasms in my back, in my butt, in my fingers. Comfy shoes are against the rules. We must wear steel toed shoes. They aren't too uncomfortable, but 12 hours and concrete floors are hard, even if I were walking on air.
My hips feel as if they are going to just pop out of their sockets, and that scares me.
I spend my breaks in the bathroom so I can just take off my shoes.




I really wish I didn't have to wear the safety glasses. That extra lens has my vision all discombobulated. But they don't have the side pieces to slip onto glasses, and it's unacceptable to buy my own and wear them. I asked.

Of course, two days doesn't equal a fair chance, so I will be going back tomorrow as I'm scheduled to, but I have to tell you -- it's really really hard, and really really painful. I hope/wish they would find me another job. there's too much waiting on the next person or the last person on the job I am doing. It would be much easier if I could stay steady busy.

But I'll keep trying. Who will come and roll me to the car when mu legs won't support me as I roll out of bed one fine morning? I wish we were having the blizzard. But too much rest may be just as bad, so maybe I'll just roll out in the morning and roll on in

They keep coming, and we can't stop it

The damn tornadoes, that's what I'm talking about. Out in Oklahoma, throughout the whole region, they just keep coming.
And there's not a damned thing anyone can do to stop them, or avoid them, or do anything but stand by helplessly while Mother Nature runs her vacuum.
Afterwards, yes, we CAN, and should, and DO rush in to help. It's what we'd hope for, were we the victims.
And we could indeed be the victims, anywhere, any time, any one of us.

Tornadoes are less a regional phenomenon than some disasters. Hurricanes hit shorelines, floods occur near rivers, mudslides are usually in hill country (slide implying gravity), forest fires happen in forests.
Tornadoes, like earthquakes, can happen anywhere.
Therefore, they can happen to you.

Now, they do have preferred playgrounds, like the Great Plains for tornadoes and the San Andreas in California, but they can happen anywhere.

The one advantage in the Plains is that usually one can see (if one is looking) from miles away and hopefully take shelter before the twister gets to you.

Last night, because of heavy rains, many, many people could not see because of the heavy rains and the preternatural darkness of the storm. Many, many people are today still shaking, still fearful, and still looking for loved ones. I hope that everyone locates one another, and that losses stay low. I wish that no one would die in these horrific storms, but that has already happened, and there's nothing I can do to change it.

I wish I could.

I haven't had a close encounter with a twister, although members of my family have. Heck, I have a brother in Kansas. My sister played tag with one last spring.(She won.)A long time ago, one collapsed my grandfather's barn. Then there was the Thanksgiving tornado, mid 90s. I went outside because it was so hot and humid, and heard the trains about a mile away, cane inside and said, "It's still and sticky, and I heard a train. Think we should hide?"
A tornado took down a garage and damaged some trees approximately a mile away.

I still shake at the memory.
The Menace that roars out of the night.
Out of the nowhere.

I can't help you, Oklahoma. Not in the preventive, sheltering, protecting ways you are so in need of.
I wish I could.
I will do what I can to help afterwards, but it will never be enough. It can never be enough.
And there's always going to be guilt that I can be so grateful it wasn't me or mine, and I feel bad about that, too.

Because I know it could have been.
May someday be.
It's good to know you will understand, if that time ever comes.

But for now, I think we would all like to put this into the past.

We are trying to help do just that.