Cyber Crooks And Vandals

Okay, so do I have a target tattooed on my forehead? Or maybe my computer is sending out bad vibes? Perhaps the planets are misaligned preventing my good fortune?

Whatever the reason, I'm working on an ulcer. Seriously.

I'm still trying to straighten out the credit card mess. The last pending charge finally showed up today, so I guess I have to call that company and fight it out. THEN I have to fill a "dispute the charge" form at the credit card company.

What gets me is these charges show up on your account AFTER you've already canceled your credit card. I got an email this morning that the new one has been mailed to me. Unfortunately, I'm still dealing with the fall-out from the old one.

I have a name for the cyber crook. Tina Furetado. I'm not sure of the spelling of that last name though. I was having a hard time understanding the guy who called this morning from Dell's fraud department.

It seems that Tina (and I'm guessing that's not her real name anyway), well, she had a yen for MP3 players. Three MP3 players. And she wanted them shipped to the above name in Florida somewhere.

Sorry, Tina, but you're not getting your MP3 players. Your order has been put on hold, and I hope they nail your sorry hide to the wall somewhere, whoever you really are. I don't hold out much hope for it, but at least your spending spree has been cut short. I'm guessing you got a phone from TracPhone, and minutes from LetsTalk.com, which is who I need to call now to dispute the $200 you charged on there. Gee, thanks. (Read that with LOTS of sarcasm. I mean LOTS.)

But wait folks, we're not done yet! Oh no, not only does some cyber crook in the states decide to have a go at me, but the so-called self-important Sniper of B*a*g*h*d*a*d hacked one of my sites. Again.

Yes, this is the second time this cyber vandal hacked this particular site. I changed passwords and thought I'd beefed up security after the last time. Obviously it wasn't enough. He managed to change my user name AND password, and if I hadn't known enough to get into the MySQL database and fix the user info, I would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Once I could finally get into the administration side, I had to find where he'd put his code in, erase it and replace it with the correct code. The only good thing about this being the second time around is that I knew where to look.

I am not amused.

So now I'm spending my time looking for better ways to secure the admin sections on my sites. I tried one highly recommended Wordpress plugin, but unfortunately after running tests, the software informed me it wouldn't work with the servers.

I installed another, but I can't tell if it's doing any good. It's supposed to bring up a password protection screen before you ever get to the one for Wordpress, but I don't see it. So I need to keep looking and see what I can do to prevent this.

I can see the cyber crooks having a go at trying to use your credit card and buying stuff. I have more trouble trying to see what thrill these cyber vandals get from hacking your site and putting up their obnoxious webpage - graphics, music, foul language and all.

Maybe they don't have anything better to do, but I sure do. I'm tired of wasting MY time cleaning up after THEIR messes.

I still have Excedrin headache #666, because I'm having a devil of a time.

On top of that, I'm sure I'm getting an ulcer. The butterflies in my tummy are getting HUGE.