Archive for December, 2010

• Hacky Holidays

  Date: 2010.12.15 | Category: Internet | Response: 8

  This morning, I was in the middle of reading my email when I was abruptly logged out of my account. I tried to log back in — but no matter how many times I typed my password, it didn’t work. Then I tried the “password recovery” feature, which was supposed to send a link to my back-up Yahoo! account. That didn’t work, either.

  When my brother called to say he’d gotten a suspicious email from my account, it was obvious that I had been hacked. The subject line read SAD NEWS!!!! and the message — sent to everybody in my address book — said the following:

  How are you doing.I’m stuck in London with family right now, we came down here on vacation,we were robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone was stolen at GUN POINT, it’s such and crazy here in London , i need help flying back home,the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is we still have our passport but don’t have enough money to get on flight ticket back home, please i need you to loan me some money till i’m back home to pay back , i will refund you as soon as i’m  back home, i promise , all we need is $2,000.Let me know if you can help..

  Now, as someone who has, at various points in my life, made my living as a writer, it seems fairly obvious to me that I would never write that, even if I had been robbed at gunpoint in London. I mean, “it’s such and crazy here”? Even under the worst of circumstances, proper grammar is always important!

  Luckily, I’m pretty sure that no one fell for this scam, which is fairly famous by now — though I was deluged with emails and phone calls from people telling me that my account had been hacked. I heard from clients, friends, relatives, even the mayor-elect of my town. Funnily enough, the only person who was seriously concerned about my welfare was my friend Adrian, who lives in England. I assured him that if I had been planning a trip to the U.K., I would have given him plenty of notice so I could drop by for a visit.

  Despite the efforts of my brother and his co-workers at Google to figure out what had happened, I still don’t know how the hacker gained access to my email account. At their suggestion, I ran an anti-virus program to make sure I hadn’t been the victim of a keystroke logging program, but the only thing it turned up was a tracking cookie from Ticketmaster.com. (I knew that company was pure evil!) I thought perhaps it had something to do with my iPhone, but my brother said it was unlikely unless someone had actually gained access to the phone itself.

  Could someone have guessed my password? That seems extremely unlikely as well. I used a variety of letters and numbers, the way the experts always say you should. Also, I was using a unique address for gmail — which probably minimized the damage I suffered. This gmail user was using the same password for her Facebook account, which the hackers managed to get into.

  I guess this does prove that anyone can be hacked — even someone who has been dealing with email and passwords for over 20 years. Still, it’s extremely embarrassing. I mean, it’s as though it was revealed that Suze Orman had tons of credit card debt, or Dr. Oz wasn’t having regular bowel movements.

  In case your account is hacked, what should you do?

  1. If you’re using Google’s gmail service, like I am, you should go under your Account Settings and, under the password recovery options, set up “Receive a text message with a password-reset code on your mobile phone.” That way, if you can’t access your email, at least that gives you another way in. I hadn’t bothered with that before — but I’ve done it now (at my brother’s suggestion).

  2. When you log back in, make sure you pick a strong password — here are some tips. And if you have to create a security question, for heaven’s sake don’t use some factoid that is easily found via your blog, Facebook feed, or Wikipedia page. Remember, that’s how Sarah Palin was hacked!

  3. Is there a way to enable email forwarding from your account? In gmail, it’s under Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP. In Yahoo, it’s under Mail Options -> POP and Forwarding. The hackers who broke into my account had set it up so that any emails that came in would be forwarded to the phony address they had created (my username plus ymail.com, a Yahoo service that’s close enough to gmail.com that most people probably wouldn’t notice the difference). Needless to say, I quickly disabled that.

  Here are some more useful tips that are specific to gmail. No matter which email program you use, be careful out there!

• Revelry

  Date: 2010.12.12 | Category: Music | Response: 0

  Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I am not a “Christmas person.” I generally bah-humbug about the crass commercialism associated with this time of year, and grouse about the lite-FM Christmas carols that assault me every time I go to the grocery store all month long.

  So for me to recommend anything holiday-themed that’s not ironic or doesn’t involve Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert singing a duet is pretty unusual. I mean, one of the reasons I love Shotgun Players is that while every other company in town is presenting “A Christmas Carol” or “The Nutcracker,” their December fare is always something like “Cabaret” or “Macbeth.” (Or, this year, an adaptation of “The Odyssey.”) However, today I went to see a genuine Christmas show and I actually enjoyed every minute of it.

  I’m talking about the Christmas Revels, and the only reason I went, I’ll admit, is because a friend of ours is in the cast. I didn’t really know what to expect — it said on the  Web site that it was “a celebration of Ireland & the British Isles circa 1900,” so at least I was confident that I wouldn’t have to endure a cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas.”

  The show is loosely structured around the story of several Irish families who are getting ready to emigrate to America. However, their ship is delayed due to bad weather, and they have to pass St. Stephen’s day in the waiting room. They entertain each other by singing, dancing and telling stories. The show has an enormous cast (around 75 singers, dancers and musicians), headed by a genuine Irishman, the very talented Shay Black, a mainstay of the local folk music scene. I was especially captivated by the troupe of young ladies who performed Irish stepdance, their feet moving so quickly that it seemed as though they were flying across the stage.

  There were a couple of familiar carols, like “Deck the Hall” (no “s” in the traditional English version) and “I Saw Three Ships,” but most of the songs were new to me, although they are, in many cases, very ancient. The beautiful harmonies of the chorus, the silliness of a mummers’ tale, the gracefulness of a quadrille dance — it’s all “traditional” in the very best way.

  The show is held in the very large Scottish Rite Center in Oakland, and while most of the seats were filled, selling out the whole place is probably pretty tough — so there’s a special offer for two of next weekend’s shows (Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 5 PM). Buy a ticket online and use the coupon code MOREREVELS to save 50%. Whether you’re a Christmas lover or a skeptic, I think you’ll have fun.

• Fullynude Showgirl Dressed Up Like Eskimos

  Date: 2010.12.02 | Category: Photos | Response: 2

  
  The marquee of the Market Street Cinema in San Francisco