Feorlen's Other Blog

Dear Every Product Marketing Team in the World:

when you try to convince me I need to be able to access my toaster from anywhere on the Internet, this is what I hear:

Hacker taps into baby monitor, shouts at sleeping infant

A family’s baby monitor is compromised by someone who uses it to look around the room and shout at people. And, btw, the manufacturer designed the device such that all logs are lost when powered down.

All software has bugs. If you are lucky, the manufacturer has a process to try to find and respond to those bugs as rapidly as possible. It can never be as rapidly as necessary, however. Choose wisely what you put on the network.

My slow-motion password change-a-thon was interrupted today by a much-anticipated package. I ordered some stuff, and it arrived right on schedule. Yay!

My stuff is great, but I want to mention a little something about the packaging. This seller recycles all sorts of packaging, a good thing. But certain things should not be recycled.

Here is what was on the back side of the printed-out shipping label:

Yup, that is a page from someone’s personal credit report. (Amex tried to sell me that service as well, but I’m not interested in paying for it.)

It doesn’t have a Social Security Number or address, but a full name and details of several credit accounts. Maybe the sender is fine with that. But it’s not stuff I would want floating around. And it’s now going straight into our shredder.