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Beware the Ides of February: Your Identity Has Been Stolen!

It’s tax season! Beware the Ides of February! Yesterday, Janna and I were disappointed to learn someone filed a tax return in our name. We discovered this identity theft when we diligently filed our 2015 taxes online via TurboTax and quickly learned our returns had not only been rejected by the IRS, but also by the New York and New Jersey tax offices! I later learned if the Feds reject your return, the States, in turn, will automatically reject your return, too. That’s good there’s some sort of communal, emergency, trigger that is in place for this homegrown brand of unsophisticated, commonplace, thievery.

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Don’t Drone Me, Dude!

“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” will soon be out-hollered by us all in a new plea against the machine: “Don’t Drone Me, Dude!” — completely performed in the outcry of public theatricality that now passes for national security. Where once our shoes had more dangerous derring-do than the hovering skies above us — today, we are forced to realize our ordinary, everyday, overlord drones are blackening our city skies and that they are inherently more dangerous than all the guns in heaven.

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How to Make Your Non-SSL Website HTTPS Secure

Last month, Google shook up the hosted online content creator world with news that their search rankings will start to reflect HTTPS security. That’s big news. Google wants a secure web, and to get us all there — kicking and screaming, if need be — they will reward those who leap on the SSL bandwagon with higher visibility.

For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.

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1Password Protects and Prevents

We live in a threatening and dangerous world where we cannot even trust our own government not to deceive and disappoint us.  Security of our proprietary information is paramount in the vulnerable warp and woof of our social fabric, and that’s why — even when I first reviewed 1Password way back on December 8, 2009 — I knew securing all my passwords in a single, super-hardened, space was not only important, but necessary:

It took me several days to change and update all my passwords — but once that dirty deed was done, I was able to relax a bit in my core knowing I now had randomized and much more secure passwords covering my life — and the great thing is I don’t have to remember any of them!

1Password remembers all those passwords and usernames and automatically logs me in with the touch of a button on my web browser.

1Password also has an iPhone app that will sync — unfortunately via WiFi only, and both your computer and iPhone must be on the same WiFi network — your desktop accounts and passwords back and forth so you can be safe and secure when you’re online with your iPhone as well.

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Why I Canceled American Express Bluebird and Opened a Brokerage Account Instead

On October 9, 2012, I was high on the promise of American Express’ Bluebird prepaid card and “bank account.”  By November 2 of the same year, I had enough, as I mentioned in a comment on my original Bluebird review:

Bluebird is majorly sucking. On Oct. 31, during Halloween Sandy, we received an emergency email from Bluebird support that my wife’s account had been locked for “security reasons.” We decided to spend precious battery time in the middle of a power outage to call and find out what was happening. It turned out someone else was trying to login to her account and instead of locking THEM out, AMEX locked out my legitimate wife from her account! Madness! Terrible security. Why punish the innocent party by making them call in and go through a 15-minute security test when we aren’t the ones causing the login problems?

Just now, we received another freaking email from Bluebird about the same issue! My wife’s account is locked for security reasons! She hasn’t tried to login to her account for days! I’ve been trying to reach AMEX support for 30 minutes. Lines into the Philippines tech support center on this Sunday are clearly not working. What a hassle!

I’m thinking we will have to cancel our Bluebird account.

Today, I made good on my promise and canceled my Bluebird account over the phone — unlike AMEX Serve, Bluebird accounts cannot be canceled online — and the only reason I waited a few days to pancake Bluebird was because I first needed to zero out my balance with an Automated Clearing House (ACH) withdrawal to my bank account, and Bluebird, unfortunately, takes many days to process any ACH transaction.

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Why Payless ShoeSource are Shitheels

Please forgive the title of this article.  I know “Shitheel” can be an offensive word, but it is the perfect word to describe what happened to me on the phone last night with Payless ShoeSource Customer Service — and the “heel” in a “Shitheel” headline about a rotten shoe company was just too perfect to pass up.  Consider this story the perfect “Shitheel” shitstorm where all the crap in the world swirled into one, massively bungled, Public Relations and Customer Service nightmare and then shat on me.

The day before yesterday, I placed a big order for four pairs of men’s and women’s shoes on Payless.com for $159.17 USD.  I liked Payless shoes.  Their shoes were cheap and good.  Oh, how I wish I’d remembered why I cannot afford cheap shoes.

The next day, expecting delivery, I went online to check my order status only to be met with this screen telling me my order had been CANCELLED!

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14th Street Apple Store In-Store Personal Pickup Problems

Yesterday, I decided to test the new “In-Store Personal Pickup” option Apple is now offering customers when you order from the online Apple Store.  I had to take the iPad 2 plunge — times two! — and I placed a nine-item order online at 10:30am in the morning and planned to pick up everything from the 14th Street Apple Store in New York City when I finished teaching later that night.

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