Bring back
the Nkandla
party line
WHERE are the days of innocence and the Nkandla party line? Have digitalised communications not become a snake-pit of greed, deceit and treachery? If it's not the president of the US banging on at you on Twitter, it's the international con artists.
I discover to my surprise that I have sent myself an email. Opening it, I am told that I have been hacked. I must change my password. A barrage of incomprehensible computer gibberish follows.
Then I am told by this gent – whoever he may be, sitting in Moscow, Bucharest, the Cayman Islands, Isipingo or wherever – that he has been following my every transaction on e-mail. He knows who my regular contacts are. He also notes my taste in pornography.
Now here he strikes a false note. I have no active interest in pornography. It might be different if I were offered a starring role but, alas, no such thing has ever happened. I detect a whiff of horse manure. This guy is bluffing.
He blathers on a bit. Then he gets to the point. To buy his silence on the pornography issue, I must deposit $1 000 in the form of Bitcoin (whatever that might be) in his "Bitcoin Wallet" (whatever that might be) – and then he launches into a tirade of computerese setting out the Bitcoin Wallet code. This instruction could be, for all I can tell, in his native Hungarian.
Then he gets back to sort of English. Failure to come up with the thousand smackeroos will result in my tastes in pornography being distributed to all my family, friends, work colleagues and contacts.
Ah, so that's the game – extortion. As I say, a non-starter. But is it possible this fellow has really hacked my computer? That he has access to my banking and so forth? It's a concern. I consult my computer fundi of many years.
As I start telling him the story, he starts repeating from memory all the blather – Bitcoin payment, all the rest of it. He's seen it dozens of times. There have been lots of cases locally. It's a scam. Just delete it.
These guys get hold of an email address – which is not the same thing as hacking your computer – and play it from there, he says. They could be operating from anywhere in the world. Millions of such scam messages on pornography are in the ether at any given moment. Some people fall for it. Delete, delete, delete!
Phew! The odour of horse manure was strong, but you never know how far the blighters have got with compromising your computer security. I mention all this in the public interest.
"Memo to Lady Editor:
"In case my computer fundi be wrong and you, the person I email almost on a daily basis, find yourself subjected as a consequence to a torrent of filth ostensibly from myself, you will know this is not the case. It emanates from an unknown creep sitting in Moscow, Bucharest, the Cayman Islands or maybe even Isipingo. And I strongly recommend it should not be considered for publication."
How I do long for those days of innocence and the Nkandla party line, where nothing like this ever happened.
Tailpiece
THE trouble with political jokes is that so many of them get elected.
Last word
I don't generally feel anything until noon; then it's time for my nap. - Bob Hope
No comments:
Post a Comment