Paranoia

I have a popular security product on my ' puter -- well okay, it ' s Norton utilities -- and it seems to do the job. However, they are constantly trying to upsell me, to the point where it ' s seriously annoying. Their latest ploy is to repeatedly show me pop-ups telling me that they ' ve found data brokers selling my information on the (doom chords on the organ) Dark Web. They are kind enough to reveal for me what the information actually is. My name, email address, employer, address, and phone number. Also who my relatives are. Oh no, I ' m dooooooooomed. It turns out that the phone numbers are landlines I had when I lived in Boston more than 15 years ago; and my childhood home where I haven ' t lived for 50 years, which my mother sold ten years ago. The relatives are my dead parents, a guy who lives across the street to whom I am unrelated, and three people I never heard of. However . . .  My email address and work phone number are posted for all to see on my faculty page, and our departmental web page. The email is listed on some 20 or 30 papers for which I am corresponding author, most of which are now in the public domain. (NIH funded research gets out from behind the paywall within two years.) Regardless, I ' m old enough to remember when the phone company (there was only one) delivered a book to every household in the United States, every year, containing the name, address and phone number of every household and business in town that didn ' t proactivel...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs