Emails From the DOJ

The first time the email came in, my blood ran cold. It was from the U.S. Department of Justice, and there was no mistaking the source. This was no scammer email—this was Legit. And even though subsequent messages would be received on a monthly or semi-monthly basis, the Sender line always gave me a start when I saw it in my in-box.
An email from the DOJ!

A few years ago, when I was operating my own business, I purchased what I thought was a good healthcare insurance policy. The premiums weren’t horrible, and they paid claims on time.
Until they didn’t.

That’s when I discovered I’d been scammed by a group of three operatives that left me hanging out to dry to the tune of several thousands of dollars owed to doctors, hospitals, labs, etc.
And I discovered I wasn’t the only one.

I registered as a victim of their scheme, hopeful I would be helped in some way by a victims’ compensation fund. Never saw a dime. The trio were all convicted of fraud and various nefarious crimes, and locked away in prison.
Good for them.

One of the scammers died in jail. I’ve lost track of another one.
But the emails I semi-regularly receive keep me posted on the ring leader, still behind bars.
He is not eligible for parole, but his release date keeps creeping forward. In 2023 alone I have received seven such emails notifying me of his ever-changing release date, from April 20, 2030 forward to December 30, 2029.

Recently a family friend drove to the airport to pick up a relative.
This friend is a real prankster, playing at the professional level of prankage. He took his entire family to greet his uncle, who he had not seen in some time. The group met the man at the gate with a hand-printed, bright yellow poster, “Welcome Home from Prison!”
I think I may have snorted coffee through my nose when I saw the photos.

But back to the DOJ notifications.
Thanks for the warning.
I’m not planning any ‘welcome home’ party.

Adventures in Digital CRM Land

We have a new employee whose responsibilities include management of our social media accounts. In bringing her on-task and up to date, we discovered a need for updating permissions on some of these SM accounts, and I discovered, after spending three-fourths of an hour lost in the maze of the ethernet, that my own access to some of these accounts is no longer viable. 

You will understand why, after reading this treatise, O Theophilus, this revelation came as something of a relief. 

The new employee asked me to put the social media account snafu into our CRM/task management system (I’m not going to mention corporate names, but their logo is RedTail.)
I seldom use this “tool,” as I am not in the selling pool, and have no need to enter customer information. And besides, RedTail is clunky to me. 

But I digress; I opened up RedTail and commenced to begin to log-in. If you don’t regularly use some software applications—like all day, everyday—these things will forget you. Or at least they’ll forget your password…so I had to hunt that thing down. In my Evernote. 

I use Evernote everyday. I still can’t remember that password, which is scary because I use Evernote to securely store all my other passwords (and forget it, hackers--they're encrypted.) My smartphone, being smarter than me, is a safe go-to for accessing the inaccessible, or at least the less-memorable. Like passwords. 

So, I got the Redtail password, and of course, it didn’t work; gotta reset that. Reset code was sent to me, you guessed it, via company e-mail…into which I had to log-in. Logging-in to company email is not an efficient use of time. It not only requires that you remember your password…it also entails a secondary level of verification, usually in the form of a text message. 

Did that, got the pass code, did the entry, and gained access to my company e-mail so I could recover the RedTail password reset link they’d sent. The link is only good for 30-minutes. 15- of which had by now rapidly passed. 

Accessing RedTail, finally, I changed my password (and updated it in Evernote) and entered the digital world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is primarily used for keeping up with folks you want to do business with. Not making assignments, so far as I can see. 

Anyway, by the time I'd accessed the CRM software through three password routines for Outlook, Evernote and RedTail, I think I forgot what I was originally trying to accomplish...oh, yeah--finding the password(s) to access some social media accounts. 

Ironic? You tell me. As a matter of fact…it probably took you less time to read to this point (thank you for your tenacity) than it did for me to negotiate all those passwords and passcodes. 

My father is 92-years old this year and eschews computers with a passion.
His life is pretty simple…and blissful.