Oddly refreshing, a major fubar here in the land of the free that isn’t Barry Soetoro’s fault…

JPMorgan Bracing For ‘Spear Phishing’ Campaign: Sources

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) officials are bracing for a massive spear phishing campaign launched by cyber thieves who broke into the bank’s servers in the biggest cyber-attack on a U.S. bank to date. Cyber criminals thought to be emanating from Russia or former Soviet satellite states hacked into numerous JPMorgan computer servers and accessed contact information like names and email addresses for 76 million customers and seven million small businesses.

JPMorgan is saying no bank account information was compromised, but it now fears the hackers will come back for this information in another wave of attacks directly on bank customers. Cyber criminals broke into JPMorgan’s servers in June; the breach was then shut down in August.

Well my plan is all coming together.  First I realized that Caller-ID had become worthless, at least as far as reliably identifying the true identity of the caller.  It can be blocked, it can be hacked, caller-id can be manipulated into showing anything the hacker wants you to see.  So I stopped paying $10 a month for the feature.  Then I stopped picking up the phone.  The machine was set to the minimum number of rings and I listened to the callers message.  But the only callers leaving messages were political and everyone else was hanging up.  So I shut off the audible ringer and stopped listening to the callers as they called in.  Seven, eight calls a day on average, maybe only one left a message and that is usually a doctors office with appointment reminders (and Cindy Crawford trying to get back together…). “Ditch the land-line why don’tcha ?!”

I’ve heard that on more than one occasion, if not that then, “You still have a land-line?“.    But consider, if I didn’t have that land-line attached to that answering machine then what number do I give the banks, doctors offices, delivery services, etc and whatnot…   And boys and girls, where do you think the numbers and names come from that are used in those Phishing expeditions?  Do you have a cell phone?  Do I?…(I’m not telling).  When the last home line is turned off then the only number they will have to pursue you on will be that cell number.

So don’t call it a land-line if that bothers you, call it a bullet trap.   By the way, J.P. Morgan-Chase holds the credit card I use for monthly recurring payment, that is the last credit card I have that so far has been un-hacked.   Nice going lamebrain!