Punta Gorda is an interesting place. We believe we live in a magical place and can’t imagine the “outside world” intruding on our little piece of paradise. I even remember a few years ago listening to folks explain how Charlotte Harbor created an inverse meteorological hyper bubble over the whole area that would deflect hurricanes towards our neighbors to the north and south. (ok, maybe the shield idea was a bit off) The point is we are lured into a false sense of security, of immunity, from the world around us.
Question: how many readers own laptops? The laptop is convenient, useful and rapidly becoming the second computer or even folks main computer because of its portability. Like anything else we become comfortable with, we tend to accept it without question. When it becomes a part of our existence, it simply becomes part of the background, there but really not noticed. Now is the time to notice.
For the third time HP announced a recall of batteries associated with their laptops. These laptops contained batteries made by “over there” that had the potential to catch fire. I immediately checked the battery in my HP laptop and determined it was not one of the batteries involved. Many folks just assumed that since they didn’t own a HP laptop, they didn’t have to worry. Or worse, since their HP was working fine, the problem must not apply to them. Even I forgot about it until the other day when I came across a news release that the battery recall now included Dell laptops which my wife has. Further research found that the battery recall had spread to many other brands.
There are lots of these laptops in Punta Gorda, and the danger of fire exists with every one of them. I want you to immediately go to the website for your laptop manufacturer and look for any notice regarding a battery recall. The site will tell you how to identify which laptops are affected, how to identify the specific battery that is defective and how to obtain a replacement. Do this today. If you cannot get to it right away, remove the battery from your laptop, and use only AC power until you can the determine the status of your battery. We don’t need any more homes in Punta Gorda disappearing in a puff of smoke because of someone or something from China, Japan, Taiwan or Korea.
Outside interference number two. One of the things that really tick off a child is when someone tries to take advantage of their parents. My own mother is very proficient on her computer. She can buy airline tickets, publish a book, manipulate pictures, buy and sell on eBay, use email, uses a wireless network in her home and on and on. I am very proud of her. But, and maybe it is her generation, I can’t seem to make her understand that not everything she sees on the computer is as it appears. There seems to be an innate trust incorporated into her generation that sadly may not have a place in today’s world.
Mom has been instructed not to install anything, click on anything that seems too good to be true or respond to anything that she did not initiate without clearing it with me. She dutifully called me the other day and said that she had received an email from eBay that her account needed to be updated and to click on the link below to take her to the eBay site and update her payment details. I told her not to click on the link, eBay would never send an email asking for payment information. But, like a moth to a flame, after four days she clicked the link, went to the site and entered all her credit card information, password, username etc. THEN she told me what she had done.
I sat down with her and brought up the email. It took seconds to determine that it was a fake. First, eBay would never send an email asking for financial information. Second, the sentence structure of the email was obviously written by someone from outside the US. Third, the link to “eBay” when clicked brought up a page that looked exactly like eBay except that in the URL address bar, instead of displaying www.ebay.com displayed www.ustupidamerican.tw. Fourth: I forwarded the email to eBay and within seconds they responded that the email was a fake. Fortunately, mom waited four days to click the button, and by that time eBay had shut down the bogus operation, redirected everyone that clicked on the link to eBay and disabled user account passwords, requiring her to use certain information that only she and eBay would have to reactivate the account and reset the password. We double checked her credit card for any activity that was not hers. Luckily there was none.
The warning here is that NO legitimate company, not your bank, not Comcast, not eBay, no one that will ever ask you to update your information in an email with a link provided.
Stay safe, and keep the outsiders outside.
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Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books
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Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books
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