Amazon was intrigued, but with good reason. Her wife never tried to fly to Jakarta, Indonesia to buy audiobooks.
The request was made by email and seemed legit. A legitimate amazon.com email address was used instead of amaz0n.biz or support-amizon.com.
But we all know scammers are smart. They can cloud the human mind in strange ways, hide their real email addresses, and disguise their origins. They come to the door with their mail bags, their hats, and everything else, leave their white vans on the street, and ask them to sign their parcels. Dogs hate him Must be genuine. Please sign here You sign without knowing that you are transferring ownership of your home.
I was staring at that email like a bomb. Ignoring the email, Amazon reckons, “Well, I tried. I’m going to get this guy from Jakarta to order Prince Harry’s book,” exclaims a man from Jakarta. A royal chilly, dysfunctional interpersonal conspiracy, told by those in the know!”
But when I clicked on the link to investigate, the email launched a covert program that hacked into my wife’s browser, stole all my passwords, installed a keystroke reader, and sent everything my wife typed. Submit information to Russian database and email mexican viagra offers to everyone. I’ve met her before, starting in kindergarten class.
What should I do then? Set up a burner account on another computer that you don’t have access to information on, use a virtual private network to pretend you’re actually in Amsterdam, use WiFi in a coffee shop to inject a virus into your router, or use smart lights or turn it on/off remotely to make fun of us.
why? Because online cautious behavior is now indistinguishable from clinical paranoia.
I thought it was a scam. So I changed the password on her account but never clicked on her link. I made sure to block out the screens from the windows in case someone was in the backyard with night vision goggles. Hmm. Perhaps if you go to the page that sells the nightstand, you’ll see a picture of it tipping over with the drawer pulled out.
About an hour later I received a text from Amazon telling me that someone from Illinois had logged into my account.
Ha. Googling if this is legal. No one knows! I found page after page of people wanting to know if this was true. The overall mood is like he’s an hour after the Titanic crashed into a cliff. Confusion and concern, but no panic.
Amazon itself seemed reluctant to say if it was real or fake. It’s a world of fraud. take care!
yes. know. So I have a multipart id, so when I log in a code is sent to my phone, the code is converted into a telegram, delivered to a secret location (rotating hourly) and sent to the Swiss Consulate. Take it and say: Gumball gave me a special coin for his machine at the airport when I said “magpies fly in the middle of the night”. The gumball machine he spit out an eight-sided die, sum the numbers, divide by pi, and enter it into the phone. This is for logging into the grocery store app.
I wasn’t logged in, so I thought something was wrong with the Amazon text. At the time, I was watching “Colombo” on Prime at 9:22pm. “You say you’ve been watching the show since 8pm, but the text says he logged in at 9:22. I wonder how that’s possible. Why is that?” I know that is bothering me.”
If I’m a criminal and I’m getting more and more annoyed with detectives, “I still remember, I accidentally clicked on a window and closed it when I thought I was closing another program, and I logged in again.” I should have said. Then Columbo smiled and said, “Oh, okay. I’ll clean it up. Thank you for your time. I’m sorry to bother you.”
But then he stopped at the door. “One more thing. If your IP is Minneapolis, I just checked and it is. Why does the text say Illinois?”
good question. I signed in to Amazon and changed my password, which instantly generated text saying my account information was being accessed by a browser in Illinois. I mean my internet the cheap throws his provider was selling in comics It is
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m going to reboot my router, burn my house down, and sprinkle salt on the ground.” No. It was scary at first, but you know, they were a really good price.
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
