I was recently locked out of my email account. It had happened a couple of times before and blown over after a couple of days. This time it was looking like more of a long-term thing, and in the event it lasted the better part of a week before I got in touch with the provider and restored usage.
Why did it happen? It seems to fall under the broad category of "suspicious activity." I've gotten a number of phishing emails, to be sure. Everybody has. And I wouldn't be surprised if someone else had gotten these phishing attempts but dummied up to look like they're from me.
But it also may have thrown the system out of whack if I logged in from something other than my home computer. The library, say. An increasing number of websites get paranoid if you log in from someplace other than your home computer. They might require you to log into your email and respond to something they just sent you. But your email provider might get a little freaked by that as well, and send a request to confirm your identity.
This can complicate things in terms of editing a wiki or commenting on a blog. It may, in fact, prevent you from doing these things at all. Luck of the draw. But people expect a certain amount of mobility in connection with the internet. Take that away and they might start losing interst.
2 comments:
I can't say I've heard of getting locked out of one's email before but considering the strange ones you noticed purporting to be from someone you do know it's entirely possible somebody, or a bot, decided to see what could be done using your email. It makes as much sense as anything I can imagine. You're right too about confusing the providers by logging in on wi-fi networks away from home. It's all getting too complicated for these poor ignorant machines to keep up with.
I was reminded of the early days of hacking computers and other electronic devices. Remember Kevin Mitnick? He wrote a book called The Art of Deception about how easy it is to fool people giving examples of exactly what to do depending on circumstances.
Then there was the almost equally famous Cap'n Crunch who used a whistle that sounded at 2600 hertz that came in the cereal boxes to fool AT&T to allow him to make free long distance calls. 2600 Magazine was named for his widely shared find.
Hackers used to be much more entertaining than now. Of course most of them did end up in prison doing time but that's what happens sometimes.
It is bizarre and leaves me wondering how often it happens. Probably more than we'd think and a lot more than it used to. As the companies hear about more threats, they add more security protocol. The protocol is mostly AI, which is to say it's a bunch of guesswork that's been permanently institutionalized. Resulting in a lot of false positives and maybe some false negatives as well.
I had forgotten Kevin Mitnick. He was obviously a bright guy, though. You had to be in order to become a hacker, at least in the early days. And of course he became a consultant and an author when he got out. That kind of seems compulsory, if you want to remain a functioning member of society.
Captain Crunch, real name John Draper, is still alive. Yes, definitely a colorful character. He sort of went legit as well, working as an engineer for Apple and creating the EasyWriter word processing system. Doesn't seem to have become entirely tame, though, since he's gotten in trouble in his later years as well.
Up through the 70s, probably, people still thought of computers as giant tape recorders in government offices. They were becoming part of the infrastructure, but slowly. It took a particular kind of mind to piratize them in those early days.
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