1920 Scary Stuff

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I got an email from PayPal today, informing me that my credit card ending in xx32 is about to expire, and I should update my PayPal profile with the new expiration date. It's true, that card is about to expire. I am certain that this email was from PayPal, not a phish, because the instructions were to independently log on to PayPal, click on the profile tab, etc.

Well, it confused me. I have several credit cards, but only one of them is used online, and that one ends in xx45. PayPal shouldn't even know about xx32.

So I went to PayPal and looked at my profile. Sure enough, xx45 is the only credit card registered with PayPal. I have never used xx32 with PayPal.

It's scary to me that PayPal knows anything about xx32, let alone that it's about to expire. It blows my mind!

-------------------------------

Then, a few minutes later, I noticed someone was visiting this blog through Google Reader. I was curious, so I went to Google Reader to see what it was about.

Google reader gave me a list of blogs and sites that they thought I might be interested in. I was shocked that it included local newspapers! And local venue calendars! Venues that would, in fact, interest me. Google knows where I live! They know what I like! Oh Good Grief!

Worse, I hadn't told them who I was. They must have got the info from the IP address.

I clicked on the "how we choose sites" link, which informed me that they chose those sites for me based on my browsing history.

Ack! Big Brother is watching!

----------------------------------

Speaking of Big Brother, I follow Jackie's TV blog for Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race. There are a group of faithful fans who have become a community, informing each other and sympathizing with the death or illness of loved ones and pets, and so on. The daughter of one of the commenters posted recently that her mother was going in for surgery.

Now here's the weird part. The mother posts using three initials, and those initials are the same as my mother's. The daughter, whom we'd never heard from before, posted using her three initials. Which are the same as mine.

Very strange coincidence.

-----------------------------------

Saturday night at NJ's we were talking about finding people online. They know I have a blog, and asked if I wasn't worried about stalkers or something. I said that the blog doesn't have my real name or location (within 20 miles) attached, so no, it doesn't worry me. None of my email ids divulge my name. And if you happen to know my real name and "Google" it, the only hits you get are from the online newsletters, and yes, that one bothers me because, as an officer, it includes my phone number, email id, and address. But you have to know who I am first.

The more I think about that, by the way, the more it bothers me. Maybe at the next board meeting, I'll point out to the group that there's a potential exposure people (like me, for example) might object to if they realized it.

Maybe The Man is right to be so paranoid about the internet. I "Google" him every so often, and if I mention that I found him on this or that list or site, within a very short time either the site or the reference to him disappears. Stuff like fantasy football winners lists and so on. I haven't asked him how he does it, because I know he will deny any involvement and I don't want to hear a lie, but it's pretty darn amazing that he can make whole sites disappear. Even those without a "contact us" button.
.