Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Why my stupidity, paranoia, cheapness is good for you.

So I'm reading this story about someone whose email gets hacked:
"Like many people, I have given over much of my life to Google. I manage several addresses, including my domain email (xxxx {at} lxxsecxxxxxlibrarian {dot} net) through a single gmail sign-on."
When I tweeted fuck "the cloud" a few weeks ago, I meant this shit.

Thankfully, I'm not important. I don't need to manage 200 things. I don't need to be online all day to deal with shit. I can let most stuff go for 48 hours and it won't make the house burn down. So I don't need all my eggs in "one basket" as this person does, or did (if she learns her lesson).

I don't have a single password or account for anything, and it terrifies me when I think that one day, Yahoo or Google or Hotmail will force me to consolidate all my identities into one superuser. At that point, I would just abandon all my emails and start fresh. Again, one of the benefits of being unimportant.

What I do have is a single text file for all my passwords on my flash drive. And before you say that's a stupid idea, let me add this tidbit: yes, I know it's a stupid idea.

And what's worse, all my passwords are in code. And each code is different. Like I have a password here that says, "'safe' minus birthday." I don't even know what that means off the top of my head. I have to remember two pieces of information and then do some sudoku or look at a scrabble board, I think, to remember the password and access that particular account." And even the location where the password fits is in code.

Here is one that says, "Hotmail = Yahoo - 1." Fuck if I ever get into that account ever again. But it's safe as hell. At least, safe from me.

Another thing, I don't click on any links in my email. If a friend sends a link to a video or some pictures, I call him on the phone and ask what it was he wanted me to watch because I delete anything with links or attachments, then he tells me what it was and we laugh about it. Is that better or worse than clicking the link?

I don't know if I'll ever get a smartphone and then use it to access every account I have. I don't understand that technology enough to trust it.

But as far as I know, no one has ever gotten spammed by one of my accounts. Because it was hacked.

But if you ever get mail bombed with ads for "METAL ASS 2," the new book of the blog by the.effing.librarian, then yeah, that was me.