Last Saturday morning I checked my e-mail. In a typical day I get a couple of hundred missives: strings of comments on food stamp regulations; updates on happenings in Washington; “great investment opportunities,” and, of course, ads for legitimate and questionable enterprises.
Saturday morning I had better than 500 items in my Inbox. When I refreshed I had more than a thousand. By Sunday the count exceeded 10,000 and climbed as fast as my Internet Service Provider could dump things into my Inbox.
Better than 99% were ‘failure’ notices for e-mails sent by my account which bounced back.
I called technical support. As always, my ISP has real human beings to handle problems. In this case, alas, I learned that my account had been hacked and used to send out a tremendous number of e-mails. That horrific volume in my Inbox represented just notices on the e-mails sent to bad or closed e-addresses.
The young man explained that trolls use specialized programs to figure out passwords. I did some quick math and replied that guessing my password was a better than a billion to one thing.
I then heard soft chuckling. A billion isn’t what it used to be. An impressive password from the 1990’s (yes, my e-mail account is old enough to drink and take a seat in Congress) can easily be busted with common software – especially in my case since a ‘dictionary word’ was part of the code.
Obviously, I changed my password. The new one is longer and much more complicated. I’m not sure of how to do the math with all the special characters and things added, but, I’d bet the odds of hitting that new password at better than a trillion to one.
More chuckling.
No password is safe, you see, if someone with tools and desire wants to break-in. The best you can do is make the task harder, thereby hoping the bad people look for softer targets.
Of course, those who need cover e-mail addresses (like mine) are not offering great deals on Dodge trucks this weekend, no, the e-mails from “Karol” and “Marilin” and “Lindy” among others carried links to what’s best described as non-Better Business Bureau approved services.
I asked tech support about lodging a complaint about the attack on my e-mail. I think the tech wanted to chuckle again, but, it was patiently explained to me that the internet really exists almost beyond law. While Johnny Fever rightly feared the phone police, the internet cops only handle child porn, massive money theft and things terrorists do. Stealing use of an e-mail account doesn’t bother law enforcement.
Sad to say, that’s the same answer I got early in this century when my identity got hacked, probably to provide a north city drug dealer with a cell phone. Despite my efforts – and help from friends in the media – no one in the city police, county police, the Postal Service, other federal or state agencies nor the cellphone company lifted a finger. For practical purposes, identity theft is a crime in name only.
So, when you see some outrageous and slanderous claim on Facebook or find a website about the Martian Conspiracy to overthrow a rightly elected perfect President, well, that’s just the way things now roll.
And, if my e-mail sends you an invitation to meet ladies wanting to do physically questionable things, feel free to ignore it.
Glenn Koenen