Firesheep Hack

I was hacked.
I was seriously hacked!

It started on Facebook. I thought it was SPAM. I reported it and deleted it.
It was promotional material for Starbuck's.
I noticed that it happened whenever I drove through a specific Starbuck's location in Kingston, NY. Then I remembered that I had gone into that location one day with my computer and logged on using their "public" network. My computer warned me that it may not be "secure," but it seemed like a nervous parent warning teenage me not to stay out late.
 I logged on...

Now that I am a parent, I should have heeded the computer warning because I am constantly watching my children careen towards disaster while I pull them back.

First, Starbucks posted to Facebook on my timeline as ME.
Then it got much worse.

The next day, McDonalds posted to Facebook, "Thanks McDonalds! That was a great meal - check out the new Menu! :)" - on my Timeline and TAGGED a group of my friends, which means that all of their friends saw the post as well. The strange element was that I had recently gone to a drive-through McD's with my phone and laptop with me. My phone is G3 and might have been searching for a network? I haven't been to a McD in years, it is purely road food, last resort, must eat now food.

I am not a paranoid person. I look for answers. I changed my passwords to everything.
I deactivated my Facebook account and opened a new one with a new name and a new email address, but I used the same computer. I also used the same phone, a DROID, which runs on a Google platform.

I logged on and suddenly my new accounts were linked and Starbucks posted on my new Facebook Timeline. This time I deleted my account.

What you need to know: Laptops are at risk. The program FIRESHEEP is easily used to grab your information. There is a Firesheep program for MAC computers.
The code used for internet addresses are either HTTP or HTTPS, the first one is not secure and on a public network, none of your "private information" is private. Below are some articles that help explain the identity theft.

FIRESHEEP  PC WORLD article

Firesheep at Starbucks, CNN Money

Hacking HTTP vs. HTTPS, Fast Company Article

Identity, virtual identity being stolen...only I am still alive and I am here to claim my place.

Bob's Daughter

past perfect

We hold parts of each other. I believe it is an extended form of memory and identity. Places, objects, design, they are all parts of this process of understanding one's self, community, civilization.
I am attached to people as individuals, but also as parts of a world view.

I have joked in this blog that I mustn't speak to certain relatives without first reading the NY Times, but I hold deep respect for their attention to detail about all things NYC. I am not this person, I used to be...
My reading no longer comes with the crisp sound of folded newsprint.
If you did not just have a sensorial memory you have never lived with this sort of reader.
I always read the NY Times before speaking with Cousin Susan and recently she died.
I last wrote about her HERE (click to read post).

Another piece of Bob has left with her. We both loved him. She was my mom's cousin, but he adored her and if it wasn't for her, they might not have gotten married.

Susan's apartment, with her husband Evan, was Bob's "first big residential renovation".
The apartment is exactly the same now as it was in the early 1960's.
I was there in 2011 and Cousin Susan showed me everything (again).
It was a ritual - one I loved. As I read her obituary in the NY Times I played it over in my mind.

She would start..."There used to be a wall here." She gestured to the left from the foyer into the dining room. "He (Bob) said to me, 'Are you planning to cook a lot of meals?' I said, 'No, what do you think??' - so he moved the kitchen. I didn't need that huge kitchen and now we have this beautiful dining room. It does however, have the back door entrance in it, but who cares?" - and the tour would move on.

We would then enter the kitchen. I could have told anyone it was a "Bob Caigan kitchen", two sinks, two ovens and a telephone area designed  with a place for phone books, pens and pencils and a shelf for writing down messages.He died before cell phones and he believed firmly that one needed to plan ahead and be prepared for how the phone would be answered and messages taken and given.

As an architect and designer he planned for how life would flow most easily.
It upset him terribly when there wasn't order.

When people die I have this horrible feeling that they have been misplaced. That their stories will be lost or untold. I am Bob's Daughter. I am upset by the mis -order of the internet. It is not disorder. It is more akin to misinformation.

There have been very fancy words used to describe Susan O. Friedman, but for me she always had the best blanket to sit on at the Lakeville beach and after I had our twin daughters and was hospitalized, I called her crying and she brought me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Oreo cookies in plastic lunch baggies and sat with me. That's my eulogy. You can read the real one HERE (click).

With love,
Bob's Daughter