Wednesday, October 01, 2008

someone hacked our account

10/1/08 Wednesday
I’m off to a much better start today. By the time Cherie got off work I had cleared up and cheered up a great deal. I time going to Janie’s to poop scoop to be in Midland when she gets off work so we often go out to eat. That’s a big help for Cherie as it saves her from cooking dinner. When we got home I ran over to pick up Chuck and Lillian’s trailer so I could gather horse manure from the old man’s horse barn. Got so much I had to drive home at thirty miles per hour to prevent it from blowing out all over the highway. I’ll get that much every month just from him and there are two, maybe three, other places I can get manure from.

Last night Cherie noticed two charges on our commercial farm account that we didn’t recognize. Calling the phone numbers attached I was able to reach one of the companies. The other was a voice mail jungle that, when you finally reached a mail box, informed you it was full so couldn’t take a message. The other one was a telemarketing service in India where we could barely understand what the guy said. When I called back I got someone who spoke English without an accent. Come to find out the charge was for an adult site. Someone named Kenneth Levine from Rockford, Illinois, had made the charge. We obtained his IP address but don’t know what we can do with it. The other charge appears to be for a facial treatment that you see ads for all the time, Pro something that I can’t remember at the moment. So someone has hacked into Cherie’s computer and stolen our credit/debit card information, or at least I think so. They used the card that Cherie has and her computer is the one we have all our bank information on as it’s the one Cherie does the online banking. Not good, I’ll be running to the bank today to see what we can do about it.

There is lots to do as there always is. This is one of the days I work for the old man so I need to be there at nine. That barely gives me enough time to water the melons so I’ve got to get moving.
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There were a lot of doors I moved out of the old man’s building. They weren’t terribly heavy but they added up fast so I’m pretty sore now and not walking well at all. Nothing unusual there. I went to lunch at a little place in Stanton called Mama’s or something similar. They have a great sit down menu, actually they don’t have a menu per se but list the day’s choices on a board. I had chicken fried steak and it was great. There were some people there, one of whom looked vaguely familiar, who made a point of asking how I was doing. I told them great but a little sore as I carefully found a seat. I could overhear them and from the conversation figured out they were from the first church of Stanton. When I finished eating I asked if they were to confirm it and then asked how pastor Dave was doing. “The last I heard he had surgery on his neck but I’m not really in contact with anyone at the church so don’t know” I said. They told me how he was recovering from this surgery and able to play racquetball to get exercise.

When one of them said “You should come and visit” like a dummy I opened my mouth. I’ll never learn I guess but always am honest and open about my feelings so I expounded on how we had gone there for over a year and not one person had visited so we went to First Baptist in Midland where we found friends to fellowship with. There is no telling what will happen with those words if they travel back to the church through them. I just have a big lack of trust and some of the paranoia I constantly contend with when it comes to that. Plus the hurt runs deep and won’t go away. I still don’t understand what happened. But I told the guy, who is the youth pastor I think, about how a group from our church will be coming out on the 25th to help work on stuff and invited them to come out. “It will be a great time of fellowship and there will be food as well so we’d love it if you came” I said, and I mean it. In fact it’s an open invitation to anyone who wants to come, that includes all of you readers out there. If you need directions on how to get here just email me at bobcarver2@yahoo.com.

After that I went to the bank to deal with this identity theft or credit card theft issue we have. I canceled both bank cards and filled out a dispute form regarding the problem. She explained how things would work, that if any money was withdrawn fraudulently we would get it back. That’s good to hear.

I’m falling asleep so need to take my afternoon nap. I suppose it will always bother me that I must do this but that’s the way it is.

2 comments:

Stu Pidasso said...

Keep your head up, Bob. Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. I know that if you are working this hard, the Lord will not abandon you. God bless.

Anonymous said...

Alrighty heres some advice to keep this from happening again, visit the US Secret Service's website they deal with internet fraud and have advice on how to avoid this in the future. Two, when you use a webpage to make purchases make sure its a SECURE site by looking in the URL address bar if it says HTTPS is secured if the "S" is missing its NOT secured. Three, some businesses do not block out your entire card number scratch off everything but the last 4 digits of it if you come across this (yes, its legal) and for your protection I do this all the time one of the business's that DOESN'T block the entire card number is TCBY over on Wadly I scratch out my number there I get strange looks but hey I dont' want my information stolen. I have a feeling one of the sites your friend/wife/spouse went to wasnt' secure and thats why it her card number was stolen.