Planet Earth 2010 - Phishing E-mail Scams

It's a fact of life today, we live in a computer world, and the health of our computers has become as important as staying physically healthy in our minds and bodies. Have you ever wondered what to do if your computer got infected? This email was sent out by our office manager, about how Crosby & Higgins LLP in New York dealt with it. I found it fascinating, sort of historic. A sign of our times today, but this stuff changes over time. This could, in the future, be like an article written in 1858 about how to repair your buggy whip would be today.

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Fraudulent E-mail Alert Update
Wednesday March 24, 2010 11:00 A.M. EST

Please be advised that a fraudulent e-mail alleging a copyright infringement suit is still being circulated. Although some details may have changed from the earlier version, the e-mail is completely fraudulent and should be deleted immediately. We continue to take all steps possible to investigate and prosecute this matter with the appropriate authorities. It is not necessary to forward the email to our firm at this time. Thank you for your continued support and understanding.

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Tuesday March 16, 2010 10:00 A.M. EST
Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As many of you are probably aware by now, Crosby & Higgins LLP has become the latest victim in what is now an urgent problem in internet security—a “phishing e-mail scam.” Millions of these phishing e-mails are sent every day pretending to come from reputable firms when in fact they have nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, there is no way for any of these firms to prevent fraudulent e-mails from masquerading as communications from legitimate businesses. What happened in this instance is that some individual or organization created a fraudulent phishing e-mail purporting to be from an attorney at the firm, and “advising” the recipient that they have been sued for copyright infringement. Although the e-mail contains numerous signs of being fraudulent, it appears just authentic enough to cause alarm for its recipients. Worse, the e-mail includes an attachment infected with a malicious “Trojan Horse” virus which we understand was successfully intercepted by many antivirus software programs.

Like hundreds of other innocent firms that have been victimized by phishing e-mails, Crosby Higgins LLP deeply regrets any inconvenience this may have caused. Please be assured that we are doing everything we can to spread the word and take the fight back to those responsible for this malicious act:

When the first inquiries were received Friday evening March 12, we immediately began investigating and quickly confirmed that the fraudulent e-mail had nothing to do with us and was not being sent from servers hosting the firm’s e-mail and website.

By Saturday morning March 13, we posted a “fraudulent e-mail alert” on our website and immediately filed a report with The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team—a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the public and private sectors to protect the nation’s internet infrastructure and respond to cyber attacks across the nation. As well, we began monitoring internet blogs and internet postings and actively worked to spread the word that the e-mail was fraudulent. We also began immediately responding to e-mail inquiries to our firm over the weekend from concerned recipients.

On Monday morning March 15, the e-mail began spreading throughout the internet and by mid-afternoon was circulating around the world. Through the course of the day, our firm responded to hundreds of phone calls and e-mails and replaced our website with a page dedicated to the fraud alert. We consulted with numerous IT specialists to better understand the origin of the e-mail as well as the nature of the virus that was infected in the attachment.

On Monday afternoon March 15, we communicated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York City Police Department Computer Crime Desk and filed a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a joint partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The IC3’s mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding area of cyber crime.

Thankfully, it appears that the effort described above, along with the incredible outpouring of support from friends and strangers alike, has gone a long way towards blunting the impact of this event. We are optimistic that in the coming days, this latest “phishing scam” will run its course. What will not soon pass, however, is our determination to see that phishing e-mail scams get the attention and response they deserve from industry and government alike. Electronic communications are far too central to allow a small group of cyber terrorists to disrupt business operations, harm reputations, and destabilize the communications network that all of us have helped to build. In our view, there must be a decisive, concerted effort, to put an end to this, and we hope that our experience can add another voice in the fight to improve internet security.

In the meantime, Crosby & Higgins LLP will continue serving its clients with the all of the passion, skill, and integrity that our firm works so hard to deliver every day. We are grateful for the tremendous amount of support that we have received from our clients, from the legal community, and from the public at large, and look forward to getting back to the business of what we do best—fighting for our clients.


With Many Thanks,

Todd A. Higgins, Esq.
Managing Partner
Crosby & Higgins LLP
350 Broadway Suite 300
New York, N.Y. 10013
www.crosbyhiggins.com
Tel: 646-452-2304
Fax: 646-452-2301

Sunday morning thoughts about God and war

I am not one to dwell on god and/or war, but I so wowed myself with my own musings this morning that I hurried to write them down before I forgot them.

I believe God made this world. When I say “God,” I don’t mean any particular conventional god such as Jesus or Yahweh or Allah. I am using this definition of God:

God (4): the creative, integrative, and redemptive process at work in the world that is the supremely worthful actuality of all existence and upon which all other forms of existence depend for life, meaning, freedom, purpose, value and the realization of their highest destiny

Webster’s 3rd Int’l Unabridged © 1993

The “creative, integrative, and redemptive process at work in the world” is us. You and me. Also the flowers and trees and animals and microbes and every thing with life in it. You can’t take God out of Man, and you can’t take Man out of God. So, God made this world for Man’s pleasure and delight and We worship Him by appreciating all the abundance and beauty here.

So, why does war exist? Why is there starvation and devastating tsunamis and earthquakes? Why is there crime and inequalities?

Let’s discuss each of the above questions. Why does war exist?

Well, when God made this beautiful place for Us it included the freedom to enjoy it in whatever way we chose. God is not responsible for Our choices, We are. God “allows” war because he is allowing Us our freedom of choice, which is the only way We can learn and grow. How could we learn if we didn’t have freedom to choose among the infinite variety available to choose from? If God said “you can learn ANYTHING you want… EXCEPT THAT!” Of course “THAT” will be the only thing of interest that we would want to learn. And some of Us seem to enjoy great war stories. The earliest cultures all over the world have passed down their tall tales of historic battles and great war romances. If God forbade war, the way He forbade Adam and Eve to eat the apple, or Pandora to open that box, well we all know how that turned out.

So, why is there starvation and devastating tsunamis and earthquakes? Why are there different types of climates where food is abundant in variety in one clime and almost absent in other types of desert climes? Because we are free to choose where we want to live, among all the delicious varieties of places there are. Oh, they did not choose starvation, you say. Nobody would choose that. And I say, I agree with you that I wouldn’t choose it, and apparently you wouldn’t choose it either, but all Man has is freedom to choose, so what else could it possibly be? People who don’t like starvation do leave it and do go live somewhere else and create lives they prefer all the time. That’s what life is, choosing what you want out of it. The question shouldn’t be why does God allow it, but why are we only seeing such things as horrors rather than opportunities to make things better? There’s no law that says you have to feel bad because something you don’t like exists in the world. You don’t ever have to feel bad about anything at all. Really, all there is on this planet is choice, and you may as well enjoy it and feel good about it. We are so free to choose that we are free to choose slavery or awful conditions. We are free to learn and be compelled by circumstances to take new directions in life. If you read those “how to get rich” books and articles they all say it’s learning to think in a way that makes opportunities out of all those mistakes and things that go wrong in your life, rather than complaining about it. That’s the big secret! You got it right here on my blog! You can’t change the world, but you can change how you think, and that’s exactly how the world changes.

Why is there crime and inequalities? Well, you get the idea.

You can’t take God out of Man, and you can’t take Man out of God. You can’t have Man without the God-given right to create your own life with all of this world’s God-given gifts, and you can’t have God without Man. This world is a self-perpetuating and ongoing co-creation. We are all in this together. Why is earth a hell-hole of poverty, war and devastation? Why are you looking at it that way? Why can’t it be viewed as a place so abundant that you have an infinity of delicious choices? Why is there war? An awful lot of people must be thinking about it, because if we all started thinking only about peace, that’s all there would be, and I think more and more people ARE thinking more about peace, and I think the world IS headed toward more peaceful co-existence among all its peoples because the world view IS changing.

Happy Birthday Pat!!

This is an email I sent today:

I had intended to call you on my lunch hour to wish you Happy Birthday today, but my day went kind of like this:

I started a huge clean/format/scheme/cross-reference job which all by itself could take a whole shift of concentrated attention.

I was able to give it 4 hours, when my co-worker left. As soon as he walked out, the emails started:

User A sends a request wondering if User B may have already sent the same one.

I spent a moment wondering why she did not inquire of User B before submitting the request to us, while responding “let me check.” While I’m checking the work log and deleted emails, I get the following email:

[From the NY Doc Center in response to my plea for help with the documents which were now flooding in]: I think Miami already did this request earlier today. I spent a moment wondering why he hadn’t checked first, while responding back “let me check.” While I’m checking the work log and deleted emails, I get the following email:

Please clean the attached document. I forward this request to the help desk.

20 min. later I have established we have no record of having received the request prior to User A sending it, and I am about to let her know that when an email from User B, forwarding her original request, which she had sent last week, arrives, asking “did I send it to the correct address?” No, she had not, but we now have her request and it is now logged in.

I take this moment to email my manager that I am getting backed up with jobs that I can't farm out. She emails back "What do you have?" I tell her. She never responds again.

20 min. later I have established we have no record of having received the same request that the NY Doc Center was asking about, and am about to let NY Doc Ctr know when an email from NY arrives that the guy there has established the same and will now start working on that request. I did not reflect too long on the fact that the last 20 minutes of my life had been a total waste, and clocked out for lunch. Just then I get this email:

[From the helpdesk] “Ticket #54932 has been resolved.” I wonder what the f*** does that mean? Is this ticket for my cleaning request? I don’t have too much time to ponder this, because the phone rings at that moment. It’s some techie in Phoenix asking me if my document had ever gotten cleaned? I tell him I’m not sure. Is my request associated with Ticket #54932 by any chance? After a few minutes he has verified, yes, it is. So, in that case, can’t you tell ME if my document ever got cleaned? No, he doesn’t know. I asked him, how has anything related to this ticket been resolved? He had no explanation to offer. He cleaned the document.

While all the above was going on I receive a request for status on a job. I reply that his request has not been started, that I am the only one in the doc center, and that I have asked my manager for help, and copied manager. He replies, "I'll find other help." I reply, "Thank you!!!" By the way, this was an attorney I have never seen a request from before. He was probably new, sending his first request, and has now probably been scared away from the doc center for life. My dismay is short lived as my attention is diverted to an incoming email:

The SV (Silicon Valley) operator is informing us that she is in SF (San Francisco) today, and that we should expect some requests from SV. Just as I'm wondering what the ramifications of this are, I receive a request from SV. I log it in.

I realize that although I clocked out, I never took lunch or punched back in, meaning I went into unauthorized overtime. I email my manager: "I clocked out for lunch but have been in nonstop emails and phones. Please advise." I never hear back from her.

Receive email from SV to All Document Centers that she is experiencing "a lull,” can she help out with anything quick?

I inquire if she can take the request we just received from SV. Yes, she can.

Some more jobs come in that I am able to farm out to other regions.

I take a short lunch break. Your birthday has completely left my mind for some reason.

I haul a** and manage to finish the job I had originally started just before my shift ends, put on the out-of-office assistant, and bolt out the door.

So, here I am at home, having just uninstalled my virus protection that was conflicting with my computer and getting ready to install a whole other one, and looking forward to being up all night downloading security software, with just 10 more minutes left in today to wish you:

Happy Birthday!! Happy St. P Day!! I sure hope your day was better than mine!

Love

L

I just made a "necklace" in 2 minutes

I wanted to wear something a little different today, so I wound two scarves together and clipped them with a pin so they wouldn't come unwound. I left the other side hanging, but clipped together with a hair clip. :) Isn't it COOL?!

The FIRST & ONLY word processor to speak out!!

I searched the entire internet, for “document center,” “document centers,” “word processing center,” and “word processing centers” and not only did none of those phrases come up in a blog, but none of those phrases came up ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET, and none of those words even came up on any relevant site. Nobody is talking about this stuff!! If you want the truth about word processing and word processing centers, you can only get it here on MY blog!

I AM THE SOLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE HIDDEN WORKINGS OF DOCUMENT CENTERS IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE!!

All FREE to you, just because I have nothing better to do than gripe about my life! Many years of which were spent in document centers, word processing, document processing, whatever you call them “you need your garbage taken out? Have someone in WP do it, they’re highly paid technicians,” or “have the doc center deal with that crap,” have echoed through the hallowed halls of law firms everywhere. At least everywhere in my town, Any Metropolis, USA, and I know, because I have worked in a LOT of them in law firms in the valley, on the coast and downtown, as well as the scientific and engineering corporations way east and south where law firms would never deign to slum.

The biggest document center I ever worked in served 8 floors of attorneys, and was in this enormous room, with 6 word processors working round the clock in the front by the supervisor’s office (a wonderful lady I wish I had kept in touch with), and 6 proofers that worked in the back. Those proofers were FUNNY. Their banter among themselves kept me laughing all night long.

The smallest document center I ever worked in, I was it! Consequently, I was also the “tech department.” It was the first and only time I ever worked 9 to 5. I loved that place. They thought I was a genius no matter what crappy work I produced. I never intended to produce crappy work, but sometimes it just can’t be avoided. Something had gone awry with a program, and the best I could do on the amount of time they had (none), was to press a button on a faulty program that spits out exactly what they need, but full of errors, but it spits it out in 2 seconds. They didn’t care that it was full of errors they had no time to correct before filing with the court, they were just amazed and gratified that I even knew of such a program that could produce a mere semblance of what was needed so their filing wouldn’t get tossed. There’s no more wonderful feeling in this world than being thought of as a miracle worker, and I guess that’s what has kept me in document centers. That, and it was the only thing I knew how to do that anyone would pay me for.

When Jane Fonda made the film 9 to 5 (with Dolly Parton) she came into the document center at 20th Century Fox to check out how a real office works. She only looked around for a moment, saw me working furiously as my co-worker filed her nails while watching soaps on a pocket-sized TV, and Jane probably made the same mistake everyone does, that the center was far away from the action, in a windowless office, full of losers, and was of no account. She missed what everybody misses about document centers: We run the world. We service ALL the attorneys, and ALL the secretaries, and ALL the departments in the firm. Seriously, I work in a regional center right now. This is my region (see all those little white dots in the USA?):

We hold the fate of lives firm-wide in our flying fingers. It’s a dangerous life. I won’t even go into what could happen to an operator that inadvertently leaves out a zero in a document.  Literally.  I saw what happened to an operator that did that once.  I've been a nervous wreck for 30 years from incidents like that, and deadline pressure. Document Centers have been begging their users for more time since my first job in one in the late '70s, while the users never fail to be amazed that we don't have a magic button to push and spit out exactly what they want in 10 seconds. Oh, so what does my firm go and do? Removes the least senior member of the document center and reassigns him as a litigation secretary. Ok, litigation secretaries like go to school to learn how to do that, right? This guy's last job before working in the center was at Lensecrafters. But, he was so essential to the document center that basically we are now getting comments like this recent one: "I have used the document center twice, both with very disappointing results." Our manager's comment: "She'll get used to it." Soon after we lost him, they saw fit to move another operator out of the center. This does not make me feel insecure about my job at all. Oh, and to add to all the stress, they are constantly changing my work hours. In fact, today I was so wigged out I worked an hour past my shift because I didn't know when it was time to go home until someone asked me when I was going home and I figured out I should have left an hour ago. Oh, and did I mention I'm 60 and completely burned out and praying every day I'll just get through the next 3.5 years when I can retire?

So, my search turned up nothing relevant. Among the irrelevant things it turned up was this email from "Region Twelve Headquarters" (whatever that is):

It says:

Written by Administrator
Thursday, 25 February 2010
A Typeable VRR is now available to all in the Document Center
Last Updated ( Friday, 26 February 2010 )

No website, nothing being advertised, just an ordinary email I might get at work letting everybody know that “A Typeable VRR” (whatever that is) is now available in the Document Center, only actually, I wouldn’t get that email at work! Everybody else would, but document centers are invariably not copied on any emails announcing the new things they do, and will not be informed they do them until some poor sap comes in wanting it. How far the shit flies is entirely dependent on exactly who that poor sap is. A secretary? A senior partner? Some poor paralegal pulling an all-nighter for a huge case, while the name partner on the case is home watching TV?

Anyway, it really creeps me out that the only thing that comes up on a search is that creepy email!

I still have an article somewhere about word processors having more on-the-job stress than air traffic controllers. I will find a way to link that article to this page so you can read it.

REMEMBER: YOU CAN ONLY FIND THIS STUFF HERE.

Just another Saturday in My Whole New Life

Characters:
Ted, my roommate
Keira, my niece
Lu (or Lulu), my cat (who is a real lulu)
David, my dead husband

I stayed up until 5:30 am perfecting my blog! I am addicted to my blog! It’s my new drug! I didn’t get up until 2:30 pm and boy did I need the sleep. They have been working me like a pack mule at work, and changing my schedule all the time.

Today I received a gift from Keira of a “too-cute” calendar. I love it, but was struck by the note inside it all covered with stickers. She has just entered her fourth decade and her letters to me still look like this. How adorable is that?
I had to go to the post office to pick it up. That’s because my new mailbox doesn’t hold anything bigger than a postage stamp. I was struck by how short the line was, as was the man ahead of me in line. We got to chatting, discussed the future of the post office, and when his turn came up our chat ended this way:

Man in post office: “… because of what I do.”
Me: “What do you do?”
Man in post office: “I consult with attorneys about their financial needs.
Me: “Oh! I consult with attorneys about their document needs.”
Man in post office: Weak smile, unimpressed nod.

When I returned from the post office I made bacon and eggs. What had happened was Ted is always having Les Girls over cooking, and one of them left half a package of bacon here, which Ted wasn’t going to eat, and I wasn’t going to let go to waste. I think I last cooked bacon in the 70s. I had no idea how to do it. Well, I put the slices in the pan, and they were sizzling too slowly for a really long time, during which Lu cried for food, really annoying me.

I told her how dismayed I was at her doing that, because she’s so good about everything else. I had a very serious talk with her for about 5 minutes explaining exactly why I wasn’t going to feed her every time I’m doing something in the kitchen. She finally went away and let me make my bacon and eggs in peace. Wow! That needed way more explanation than most things, but she usually makes the best of things not going her way once I explain them to her, but for some reason I thought I could never make her understand that. I finally realized that was just another belief ("all cats do that and can't change") that I had not examined.* I examined it, tossed it, and broke a new record on what I could make my cat understand!!

Back to the bacon, I finally figured out that I should up the heat. Eventually some slices were ready to be taken out of the pan, while others were still frying, and it suddenly came back to me. When I used to do this, I drained them on paper towels! I was cooking now! Haha.

So, just as I was cleaning up the kitchen, Ted comes home and asks me if I had cooked bacon. I told him I had. He said that was really bad timing as he had just cleaned all the surfaces. (This from the man that told me the other day, “I’m dusting this table with my dirty sock.”) I showed Ted the too-cute calendar from Keira and he loved it, so I left it out where he could see it too. And then I told Ted about winning the battle with Lu after a 5 minute explanation and Ted said to Lu, “Your mommy can get very wordy.” I thought that was so funny I had to put it in my blog.

I have been having so much fun blogging! Really, my heart is just singing! And nobody is even reading this! I’m just playing with myself, as usual! That’s what widows do. That, and wonder who they will play with next.

On my journey back to me today, I made bacon and eggs, reached new heights with my cat, received a gift from my niece and got to write about it. Really, could life be better?

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* David and I had developed our own individual healing system, which came about in conversation when we realized listening to each other that we had unexamined beliefs, which we began to examine as they came up. One of us would say something and the other would say, “you might want to take a look at that belief.” We examined every belief that came up to decide if we still agreed with it or not. There were a lot of laughs and tears, a lot of self-discovery, and a lot of growth. We eventually reached a new plateau where we had no more unexamined beliefs, and were thinking only with beliefs that we agreed with. It was a new height for both of us, physically, spiritually, mentally, psychically, romantically, in every way. We even started writing a book about it, as we thought others might benefit from our technique, but he died just as we were getting started on it.

My Design in Light

March 5, 2010

This is my light design that displayed in Vancouver over the Olympics, Feb. 2010.
http://www.vectorialvancouver.net/archive.php?id=16555
I'm very proud of it, so I thought I would make it today's blog entry. The whole idea of the whole world sharing in the light show over the Olympics made me feel very connected to people all over the world. In my new life I need a lot of connection to others. I'm connecting and re-connecting all over the place! It's like as more love flows through me, the more people I need to love. You can click on next and previous to see the designs and dedications of others. To find out more about the vectoral elevation art installation and its creator click on the information links.

This was the original news article I saw that touched me so much I wanted to join this project:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june10/vancouver_02-24.html

People's Park

Candid picture someone took of me in a camera store in Berkeley 1968-9. I was just as spaced & oblivious as I look.

This is taken from an email I wrote this evening to my Scottish penpal (I live in USA):

I'm not into politics either, but I never had to be. I was always happy enough with whatever I had. I guess if I lived in a tiny village that depended on a lake that was bought up by a giant corporation who fenced us out from our only source of water, or if I lived where there was a tyrannical or terrorist government, I would have to get political to survive. But I have never been in a situation like that. The closest I ever came to that was getting chased out of People's Park in 1969, and waking up the next morning to look out my window and see the National Guard lining my street! And I lived in Oakland, and People's Park was in Berkeley! So, they were covering a lot of territory. That day I was glued to the live radio broadcast of the city council meeting which lasted ALL day. But the feeling that it might be a good idea to not leave my house kind of made following that particular news story really fascinating. :) Actually, I did leave my house to greet the national guards and they suggested it would be a good idea if I went back inside. I somehow didn't think it would be wise to argue with them. :) And if I hadn't talked to them I wouldn't have been informed that there was a curfew!

I just realized that I am talking to an equally non-politically minded person, and about a foreign country no less, so I should probably explain, so I looked up "People's Park" in Wikipedia, where I found this:

“The mythology surrounding the park is an important part of local culture. The surrounding South Campus neighborhood was the scene of a major confrontation between student protestors and law enforcement during May 1969…”

OMG, I am so ancient that a week in my life is considered mythical!!

What happened was there was this block of land near the University of CA, Berkeley campus where people began planting flowers and trees and they were making it really beautiful. I wasn't a Berkley student, I had just dropped out of a little art college in Oakland. But I lived a couple of miles from Berkeley and walked or hitchhiked or grabbed the bus (paying high school student fare) to Berkeley almost every day and really loved hanging out in People's Park. Then suddenly one day a swarm of cops descended on the park and threw everybody out, and built a really high fence. I remember thinking at the time that it was the highest fence I had ever seen. I didn't know what was happening or why. In fact, I still don't. It had something to do with who owned the rights to the park, and there were other issues that cops may have had about it attracting drug dealers and criminals, or Reagan just got his panties in a bunch. But there was a bit of starry-eyed, hippy flower child innocence I lost that day and in the following weeks, as I saw protestors climb the fence late at night and plant flowers, which the cops would dig up and destroy in the morning, and the cops shot at protesters and arrested them. It was the closest I had ever come to living in a "war zone" and I was scared. The curfew lasted a few days, and the loss of the park stayed with me always.

Wow. That wasn't at all what I expected to be thinking about tonight. That put me on quite a journey! I've been wanting to start a blog lately, and wondering what would I blog about? Well, I could blog about that kind of crap. :) Wow, that was really interesting. Discovering that my life is a myth is just, wow.

That is the title of my blog! "My life is A Myth." Hahaha!! Cool.