web analytics

Archive for » February, 2012 «

28
Feb

Pin Your Privacy Away

Ginger

I noticed Pinterest gaining users in my social circle in recent months. Surprisingly, I felt resistant to signing up for it myself, and haven’t been much interested in those things other people are compelled by whatever reason to “pin”.

It seems an awfully easy way for the overbearing retail world to take note of the things you like, in order to profile you and attempt to appeal to your spending potential by contacting you to show you things that they think might interest you. I have to confess, I think most corporations in the retail business are, well, annoying, when it comes to online things. I’m on a social network trying to talk to my friends and some company wants to sell me stuff. I’m on one retail site trying to purchase an item and I get advertisements from competing businesses telling me I can get the item there cheaper, and oh by the way, here are 4-8 recommendations of things I can also get along with the original item I was going for. I’m trying to play a game and I get flashy ads trying to get my attention.

I may mention services, goods, and products in this blog, but I don’t expect a retail company to come across me, and try to sell me something based on what I write. I’m sure those days are coming. My spam folder will get quite the workout then. I’m of the opinion that, if I want to purchase something you’re selling, I will find you. Contacting me without any action on my part constitutes noise that I will not pay any attention to, other than the amount of time that it takes for me to filter you to the trash. I have the same sentiment about unwanted postal mail and such.

As to Pinterest, I did end up signing up a few days ago, because there are some topics and preferences I’d like to share with my friends, such as do-it-yourself projects, recipes, and ideas that don’t relate to a specific product. But I’m not going to put my entire list of interests up there, not that I don’t mind the dialog among friends, but I wince at the thought of having a whole new slew of spammy emails and advertisements blasted at me for daring to articulate my opinion on something.

Probably related:

 Tags:  Leave a Comment
24
Feb

Updates

Ginger

February has been an interesting month. I didn’t do so much work-wise that I was anticipating, though I did finish up a couple projects for various nonprofit organizations both domestic and foreign. I haven’t felt like blogging much, whether nattering about my personal stuffs or professional doings.

I cleaned up most of the fraud-related stuff that occurred at the beginning of the month; I have confirmation from my bank, iTunes, and Paypal that yes, I am not responsible for these charges from iTunes. I still have $300 overdrawn on my bank account, because refunds are slow in coming. I did finally get the bank to cancel the overdraft fees associated with the fraudulent purchases. And after it happened the second time (after I had changed my password everywhere to something horrifyingly difficult and long to decipher), I removed all financial information linking the aforementioned three websites. I’m confident that Paypal and my bank are reasonably secure, insofar as they are not responsible for the sanctity of my password or my electronic devices.

But iTunes… I no longer trust them, their security protocols or their ability to weed out fraudulent apps in their own store. How can you not be aware of exactly every activity of every i-Device and every account? It’s on their servers, surely they have fail-safes and safeguards for such. Apparently not. I’ve seen hundreds of written accounts of other people swindled out of money thanks to the iTunes Store. The apple is rotten, folks.

I’ve been filling my time with personal activities: watching and listening to podcasts relating to writing, crafts, and electronics; playing with other personal websites relating to interests I feel strongly about; writing; cooking; and cleaning the clutter out of my habitat and my daily life. My former friend J was once trying to articulate the varying moods he had, sometimes playing video games and involving himself with online activities, and sometimes writing or creating game stuff. I mentioned something about output vs. input, which he adopted into his own vernacular.

I have most definitely been on an input kick. That doesn’t mean that my output has stopped altogether; I have just felt like focusing on just one thing at a time, rather than spreading my interests and activities as far and wide as I’m prone to doing. I love to juggle, I never get bored of one thing for very long before something else comes along that amuses me or captures my attention to the exclusion of all else. I guess that Mercury is direct and not retrograde just now. In fact… *looks at astrology stuffs* Oh yeah. As that is my ruling planet, I am definitely prone to that planet’s meanderings, especially when I fall out of discipline and let my mood take me where it will.

Anyway, I felt like poking in here for a moment. Next month looks to be an interesting one as well. At the forefront, the promise of car repairs in the immediate future?? We’ll see. The rest of life is going along pretty well, hubby and I are still disgustingly close, we’re setting our eyes on moving, and I just picked up a new job position that could very much be a profitable one. Gotta love volunteering on ventures. We’ll see where that gets me. In the meantime, there are fresh new listings to paruse regarding my usual schtick of freelance and volunteerism.

–

Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to mention: gamification. I think it’d be really fun (ha) and profitable to get some training for that going; with as many Facebook apps and socially engaging websites I have been and will be involved in, this might be a really good skillset to have. It seems to be huge this year, and I love finding ways of making menial or necessary stuff fun.

Another thing, I have a recent new favorite blog that I thought you might like: Unf* Your Habitat (warning: f-bombs flung freely there). It’s almost gamifying in its straightforward kick-butt attitude about the crap you should be doing anyway. Do something that improves your environment, and celebrate the hell out of it. On one hand, it’s disturbing that society has apparently stooped to such a level that we must be praised for doing what we’re supposed to; on the other hand, it’s awesome to become aware of personal habits, and to improve them. So, there.

Probably related:

 Tags: , , , ,  Leave a Comment
07
Feb

Billing Woes

Ginger

I’ve been the victim of fraudulent activity at the iTunes Store in the past couple of weeks. A total of $540 was stolen in the form of many false and repeated purchases of the same two apps.

I’ve found that the Itunes Store has poor security precautions for people like me, who set up PayPal as their payment option (it is no longer, I assure you), which has the benefit of allowing for instant purchases, but unfortunately, has the side effect of making it easy for a “hacker” (my uneducated word for someone who has breached my personal information) to sneak in through a trojan somewhere (in one of the apps I downloaded, very likely), and having their way with my account.

I found Apple Support to be very lacking, in their accessibility to report these fraudulent charges, and their way of solving the problem. I had to dig deep to find a web form to report these charges, and an entire 24 hours between communication emails. The gentleman I talked to the first time was very polite and flattering, but did very little to actually address my problem. After being admonished, “Our policy is not to give refunds for purchases,” he was *cough* nice enough to refund the money.

Because PayPal pulled the money right out of my bank account (I’m finding the lack of checks and balances between iTunes, PayPal, and bank very disturbing), my bank was grossly overdrawn, and I am bidden to pay the overdraft fees not only for these fraudulent charges, but also for the other legitimate bills that were coming in and incurring more fees for the lack of funds. PayPal was holding my refunded funds from Apple, but that takes four days for the money to get “redownloaded” to my bank, where I feel it is most secure.

I changed passwords and security questions at all aforementioned websites, chose a new PIN for my debit card, computer, and iPad, and of course talked to the bank, who was entirely unsympathetic to my plight (I used the word fraud, they dismissed it). Also, when Apple hears the word “fraud” associated with your account, they disable it. It takes another email to consent for it to be reenabled. I was willing to put up with that minor inconvenience, in order to get my account unlocked.

And then it happened again. 14 charges for the same app, with a slightly different app name than before, but similar enough that I knew it was the same joker. Again I dug around the Apple site looking for the customer service form. Again PayPal pulled money out of my bank. Again my bank gave me overdraft fees. Like I wrote before, the final damage was $540 between the fraudulent purchases, and the fees associated with them. Again my account was locked down. The moment I saw that it was happening again, I removed my PayPal information from Apple, and removed my bank information from PayPal. I changed passwords and logins again. I talked to the bank again. I have to pay those fees.

This has created a hardship that will be difficult to recover from. One, my iPad is an unusable brick. Two, I can’t use my bank account until I take care of the charges. Three, I’m not able to make online purchases. Four, I get paid for my webwork through online means which are now disabled.

So if I’m a bit quiet here, I do apologize, I’m dealing with stuff.

Word to the wise, if you have payment options linked up to your Apple account, disable them immediately. The Apple website and the iTunes Store are not secure, and even in changing passwords and other secure items, you are still vulnerable to attack. As you want to purchase an app or make an online purchase for your iOS device, THEN link them up, and upon completion of purchase, UNLINK them again.

*sighs* Now to figure out how to pull $540 out of my ass, or to figure out how to pinpoint exactly who made those purchases and go after them.

Oh, and this is not an isolated issue.

Probably related:

 Tags: ,  Leave a Comment