Facing Identity Crisis

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It was one of those periods when time fails to work properly to keep major events spaced out.  We had three major economic events hit us simultaneously and unexpectedly.  Two of them required financing and yet a third involved the government and trying to get our taxes filed.  In any case, I tend to need chronological space to keep these things discrete and make sure I can pay them.  After all of this was done I realized that “secure” information is being collected by all kinds of places these days.  The thing that really got me was that two of them, including the federal government, involved facial recognition software.  In order to confirm my identity I had to hold up my phone and smile pretty for the camera.  Since I can’t speak for the experience of others, I had to wonder if maybe this was because I filed a report of a major scam last year.

I don’t trust AI at all (sorry Al), and governments that collect facial recognition data scare me.  I couldn’t complete my taxes without doing it, though.  A few years ago when I was volunteering for an organization (I can’t recall which one) I had to have my fingerprints put on record.  I thought that was pretty invasive.  I’ve never committed a crime (at least that I’m aware of) and I’ve never been arrested.  Having your fingerprints on record, and your face imprinted in databases certainly makes it feel like it.  Especially since doppelgängers do exist.  On my first visit to Kentucky in the 1980s to help a friend move, the local people all insisted that I was John’s son, a spitting image.  Would Al know the difference?

Once, at Nashotah House, during an accrediting team visit, I was struck by the fact that one of the assessors was a near-perfect doppelgänger of myself.  So much so that when I showed my young daughter a picture I found of him on the nascent web and asked her “Who’s that?” she replied without hesitation “Daddy.”  The facial recognition capacity of kids is pretty keen.  I don’t put a ton of trust in technology.  Of course, the software is probably measuring things like pore depth and nostril hairs.  In neither case did I have the chance to comb my hair and make sure nothing green was stuck in my teeth.  Besides, my face is in a number of spots on this blog.  It doesn’t get as many hits as our finances took in that period when time broke down, but I guess my face is now officially recognized.

Please Read

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This post is longer than my usual fare, but it is important.  I’m putting the full text in “Full Essays” (the link is above, in the drop-down menu under the “Blog” heading) and I strongly urge you, for your own sake, to read it.  Here goes:

On March 9 I was nearly the victim of an AI scam.  Regular readers will know that I was scammed out of a large amount of money last year.  I’m vigilant now, but I’m also human.  AI exploits humanity.  I had just reported an email on gmail as phishing.  (Phishing is using email to scam someone.)  I had even written a blog post about it.  You can, and should report phishing emails when they occur.  Right now, on gmail, you need to go to the three dots in the upper right after you open the message and use the drop-down menu to report it.  I reported one message then this one arrived, looking all legit:

Let me explain.  Writers in my category (struggling, probably neurodiverse) really want to reach readers.  I want to paste the whole email into this email but before I do let me say that I Googled the “person” it was from and found a legitimate individual in the NYC area, generally.  I also Googled the NYC Philosophy and Psychology Reading Group; it actually exists.  It’s a MeetUp group.  They don’t have a website.  I checked all of this before responding.  Please read on!  I will explain the warning signs and what I realized only later.  Here is the text of the email: (go to Full Essays to read more). If you cannot access Full Essays from another website (e.g. Facebook or Goodreads), please go to steveawiggins.com to get to it (I have no idea how WordPress works!)

Whose Smile?

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Amazon’s smile logo is a mask.  I use Amazon when I need something specific and I don’t have time to run around to six or seven stores to see if I can find it (I usually can’t).  This means that many of the items come from other vendors and Amazon takes a cut.  Taking a cut, by the way, may be the best way to make a living.  In any case, I seldom write reviews of such orders.  Most of them are books and generally they arrive in the condition in which they’re described.  I did, however, receive a non-book item which did not work.  I tried contacting the seller and their email didn’t work.  I decided to alert the world.  So I took some of my precious time and wrote a review on Amazon.  The prompt promised me that if I wrote seven reviews they’d tell me a joke.  What can I say?  I’m easy.

So I reviewed books, etc. until I reached seven reviews.  The next screen simply said “Awesome! Thank you for helping other shoppers!”  Is this meant to be a joke?  What about that Amazon smile?  I just gave them ten minutes of my time for a promised joke that never materialized.  Now I’m grumpy.  By the way, I started the review process with the most altruistic of motives; I don’t want anyone else to waste money on a product that doesn’t work, and you can’t contact the seller.  To make matters worse, it was a Christmas gift, so that by the time it was open and tried out, it was too late to return it.  Is this supposed to make me happy?  I was looking forward to at least a dad joke.  None at all.  This happened a few months after I fell for a scam, so I’m not feeling especially generous to the internet today.

It’s a little thing, a joke.  I’m not good at making them up myself (although I’ve been told now and again that I can be witty).  Ten minutes easy labor, feeding the beast and the best they can come up with is “Awesome!”?  An overused word at that!  Don’t promise me a joke if you don’t intend to deliver one.  Probably some AI trick, if you ask me.  They lure you in with promises and when it’s all over you’re left with nothing.  (Kind of like the product I bought as a gift).  In the end, the joke’s on me.

Knock-on

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When you’re the victim of a scam, the loss of all your money is only the beginning of your problems.  Scammers take away the simple pleasures you’ve afforded yourself.  Your mental security.  Your very sense of balance.  If you have to close your bank account, you’ll need to telephone (sometimes repeatedly) any company with which you have autopay.  You’ll receive threatening notices in the mail that make the rise in your blood pressure audible.   It should come as no surprise to my readers that I’m a Neo-Luddite.  I’m not sure the internet is a good thing and technology has made much of life more difficult.  At the same time, I’m conflicted because I know we have it easier than the vast majority of humans who’ve ever lived.  But still.  

The scammers took control of my laptop, which is not a spring chicken.  I had to have this old rooster scrubbed, which meant all the little fixes that allowed my device to use a very old printer and scanner were also scrubbed.  Now, visiting the websites of the printer and scanner makers, they no longer provide drivers for such ancient devices, so not only do these scamming parasites leave you with muzak earworms but with now useless electronics that have to be replaced.  And no money to do it.  We’ve managed to live for nearing two decades without having to buy a new printer or scanner.  Both work fine.  Now they’re useless because their makers no longer supply drivers and I’m once-burnt-thrice-shy about shady websites that tell you to download such things.  Meanwhile some undeserving soul is using my money to fund an operation to scam even more people out of their legitimately earned money. 

Please pardon my vitriol. Perhaps it’s my fault for thinking the best of people.  I try not to classify anyone as evil, but it’s getting more difficult not to.  After an identity theft there’s a ton of paperwork; things need to be scanned and printed.  Only, oh, yeah, I can’t do that anymore.   I’m very well aware that others have bad circumstances too.  Even worse.  I’m trying to recall Viktor Frankl’s maxim of finding meaning in suffering.  I’m attempting, very hard, to apply it now.  Thank you, dear readers, for being my therapists for this short while.  I do hope that I provide enough provocative content, not focused on my woes, that will reward your reading.  Okay, I’m done venting now.  Back to the usual kind of horror that occupies this blog.  Tomorrow’s post will be about an actual horror film.  I wouldn’t scam you.

An Explanation

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Those of you who read daily might’ve noticed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday went by with no posts.  You may also remember I recently wrote about Job months.  There are also Job years.  This is an embarrassing and vulnerable thing to write, but my wife and I have been scammed for almost all of the money we had.  My computer had to be scrubbed (thus the silence of Job) and the last three days have been filled with filing incident reports, trying to remember what’s on autopay, and visiting the police and banks, making endless phone calls.  I have been a little distracted.  As my regular readers know, writing is therapy for me and I beg your indulgence as this blog, which has been pretty much daily for over fifteen years, might become a bit more sporadic.

I’m never been a great fan of the capitalistic system, but born into it, I have a general idea how it works.  One of the most difficult parts for me is when I think, “We’ll just…” and then realizing that we no longer have the financial safety net to do what ever “just” might’ve been.  This is not a welcome thing at 63.  I grew up poor, so I know what this feels like.  Retirement I don’t know what feels like, and it’s pretty clear that I never will now.  My books don’t sell well enough to provide more than an occasional book purchase of my own now and again.  That, of course, has been curtailed.

I do not understand the criminal mind.  I cannot comprehend how someone would knowingly target those of us who are aging and try to take everything we have.  At least one of the scammers was a young man.  My hope for him is that he may grow old and may, through some miracle, come to regret what he has spent his young life doing to complete strangers and try to help others instead.  I have my doubts that this will happen.  In any case, I know I have a couple of regular readers and I owe you an explanation.  Posts may become more regular again—I sincerely hope they will.  I do have some written in reserve.  But please know, as you read them, that they came from a different time and place.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash