by Today is Eleven Eleven Eleven. 11/11/11. November 11, 2011. This article was purposefully published at 11:11am this morning. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with all these ones standing in unison, but I am, and shall likely always be, enchanted:
The number one is considered “calming” and “essential” in Chinese numerology and that makes me question if all those ones in today’s date should be taken collectively or singularly. I prefer to atone to the individual digit and take all the delights that come from pronouncing all those ordered ones.
I enjoy memorializing this six-elevens article today because we’ll never have another day like this in the history of our world.
Early this morning at 1:11am, I kid you not, I was reading my Reeder RSS feed and happened upon this infuriating answer as to how my credit card was stolen:
Valve head Gabe Newell sent out a message today explaining that the breach of Steam’s forums this past Sunday goes beyond the message boards and potentially includes Steam account information.
“We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums,” wrote Newell. “This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked.”
Valve has yet to find evidence of illegal credit card activity, though they are of course investigating into what exactly was compromised in the breach. Anyone with a Steam account should keep a close eye on their credit cards just in case. It would also be a good idea to change your Steam account and forum passwords (they should be different), as well as double-check that you aren’t using those passwords elsewhere on the Internet.
I am happy to report my credit card was stolen from Steam — and I say “happy” because I’ve been churning my mind for three days trying to figure out how, where and when my numbers were stolen. I am incredibly vigilant in protecting my proprietary information.
Now I know — no thanks to Valve, though.
Why did I have to read about this theft on the web? Why didn’t Valve email and call every single one of their Steam customers to tell them to cancel their credit cards? Valve should have notified every bank in their books and asked them to proactively cancel any credit card with a Steam charge. It can be done. I know. I’ve checked into these theft notification procedures since my incident. The banks WANT to help lower their credit card theft risk.
My information was stolen on Sunday, November 6, 2011 and then used against me several states away two days later on November 8, 2011. Coincidence much?
I’m happy to know what happened to my credit card, but I am furious with Steam and I will never buy anything from Valve again. Ever! Don’t explain this away by arguing “things like this happen.” Yes, things happen — then you act. You don’t post forum messages. You notify customers and their banks and you protect people and their money and you ensure their safety!
Now I need to keep my lucky streak going and end this article now because 11:11am is nigh approaching! See you later, and have have a lovely Eleven Eleven Eleven!
UPDATE:
Exactly 11 minutes after I published this article, I refreshed the blog page to discover our Boles Blogs Network Twitter feed updated in the sidebar to reveal the Tweet for this article was published “11 minutes ago.”
Ah, yes! It’s going to be a great day!
Only 11 years until 2/22/22 — but that’s not nearly as calming! Glad to hear your situation was resolved.
2/22/22 would need to be “22/22/22” to have a similar resonance as “11/11/11” — and definitely not as calming. A 2 can never become an Eleven! SMILE!
I’m pretty ticked at Valve. They could have prevented this mess by just doing the right thing with the banks. They know all our banks. Contact them. Warn us. Don’t sit back and hope and stew and post generic “we are not aware…” messages for the masses without helping the specific victims.