Fort Knotts

Someone's been trying to steal my identity and it's not funny. Actually, the person in question doesn't even want my entire identity, just a few hundred dollars from my bank account. It's almost depressing to think that the most valuable part of my good name is its attachment to money. I can guarantee that a few years ago, nobody would have wanted to hack into my bank account for any reason.

Suddenly, as I finally come into (some) money, I'm being attacked. By a Spanish speaker located in New Jersey no less. And they're not even that good at hacking since I found out where they live, their name, and just about everything else about them with my Internet-sleuthing skills. If only they had a MySpace or Facebook to exploit. By the way, is Facebook making a huge push into the market or what?

Coming on the heels of having funds drawn out of my bank account by another Jonathan a few months ago, I've decided that my security measures are really not working. Then again, I'm not sure who to blame because if I have to explain to Paypal's resolution center person how their system works and why there's a weird Catch-22 in it, I'm guessing it doesn't take a genius to crack Paypal's security measures either. Did I mention this is the second time in a month Paypal has failed me?

Anyway, my old password security system -- created maybe six years ago -- utilitized a cunning algorithm of a certain cartoon-ish theme and numbers. It seemed capable of thwarting fools and also forget-proof. You know when IT articles tell you to change your passwords every few weeks? I've decided it's probably a good idea. I've used the same generic password for most log-ins since 2001. It makes it easy to access things but I guess it's probably not that good of an idea.

I just never thought I would see the day when supervillains would target me as a source of potential income. It's nice though, because it obviously means I'm coming up in the world. Unless this guy is the reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Then I guess I'd be a little embarassed for him since that's not very original. Nor the stuff of legend.