Author Archives: Kevin

About Kevin

Hello! MY name is Kevin Pereira and this is my personal blog.

AT&T U-verse Spamamania; I could not believe this

Posted on by
Reply

I’m sure we all get spam mail in the email and snail mailbox. Mostly we tolerate it, and/or take steps to curtail it, or even manage it. That is exactly what I did. I stopped email spam that I do not want by directly contacting the source. The others, like snail mail, I utilized the 5 year do not solicit service.

There is however one spam item that totally irks me:
ATT-U-verse-3Color

I am just bombarded by the ATT U-verse juggernaut spam machine. It is unrelenting! They even sent me magazine spam in addition to the regular mailers. No wonder why my service is so expensive.  Over and over, all they wanted was for me to signup for the same thing, again and again. I had to fight tooth and nail to stop these menacing mailers and emails! I have no idea how much time over the years I have spent trying to stop this.

At one point things calmed down, and I was able to relax some knowing I am relieved of the U-verse spams. Then recently guess what happened; they started sending it again, personalized, to another address of mine, my physical address!

It took a few attempts to stop this new onslaught. It looked like it worked for a while until this: You will not believe it! They started sending the mailer again this time non-personalized! I was in disbelief! How do I stop this now? I was played! They already took all my info to stop the personalized mailers.

photo-ATT-u-verse-NoPII

Skechers, you helped break my thumb

Posted on by
Reply

Be careful when you buy Skechers, or any shoe with short laces, or laces that slip undone often!

You may think failing to tie shoelaces is not a problem. If you have faulty shoelaces, it can catch up to you.

 

A few years ago, I fell and broke my left thumb. This is a rare event – to fall or trip. I do not recall tripping or falling occurring before or after this event. I landed on my hands, to cushion the fall. I went straight down, horizontally. I was walking in the parking lot on my way to work early morning when it happened.

I fell because my shoelaces were not tied, at least on one foot. I am not the type who does things like this. I am usually careful about these things, like tying my shoelaces. I also am safety conscious. I do not want any injuries or accidents. I may have been unaware at the moment that one shoe was undone.

This particular pair of dark colored Skechers was giving me trouble. The shoes were bought new. I took care of them at least until this event. The shoelaces, to my recollection, were short and/or they slipped after tying.

I did not realize that dealing with a broken thumb can be such an ordeal. It affects every aspect of daily life since the time it takes to accomplish small tasks takes longer. This was a 6+ week ordeal!

Ultimately, preventing a fall is my responsibility, and I cannot hold a shoe company responsible. After this event, I banned those particular shoes and decided not to buy Skechers.

A little planning and preparation up front goes a long way

Posted on by
Reply

I find myself in this situation a lot especially as I get older. I tend to spend time up front planning and preparing for a lot of things. For instance, if I go to the library to work on a project, I will prepare a sandwich to take with me so that I can spend a little longer working my project. If I go on a business trip, I painstakingly do all the preparations and planning up front for the trip. Doing this removes any headaches or potential complications. Who wants to deal with problems when it could have been avoided with a little preparation and planning? You can also get the best experience out of something if you plan and prepare for it.

My Hotmail email account got hijacked!

Posted on by
Reply

I cannot believe it, but one of my Hotmail email accounts got hijacked on 18 MAR 2013. A security breach like this has never happened before. It seems like the problem was only for that one day. I learned about this event from the several undeliverable emails I received into my inbox. I knew right away this is very unusual and something is up.

Windows Live Hotmail

Awwwrrr! Hijacked! Windows Live Hotmail

The hijacking episode consisted of sending several spam messages to my contact list. My contact list was not deleted or altered that I know of. I do not believe my vacation replies or any other settings were affected. Surprisingly, all the hijacked spam emails were in my sent items folder. Thus, this is proof that this event occurred. I learned that this type of attack sends spam to your contact list because recipients are more likely to click the link since the email is coming from someone they know. Ha! Clever eh. I figure this type of attack is more lucrative. The only bad thing about this is that my contact list is real old, and I have some old employers in my contacts that some of these spams got delivered to. So I can only image what they are thinking – oh yea that guy… glad he’s gone… What! he still has me in his contacts!?!? See this is the only downside to getting hijacked. 🙁

I noticed that the email address used in the hijack was a Hotmail alias address. Hotmail allows you to create up to five email address aliases per Microsoft account per year. You cannot login via the alias, but you can send and receive email from the alias inside your primary Hotmail, rather Microsoft, account.

What I do not understand is that how was the hijacker able to login to my account via the alias if they did not know my primary Hotmail email address, and since you cannot login via the alias? All the spam messages were sent using the alias and not my primary email address.

What triggered this hijack? The only thing I can think of is that I may have used my alias for some purpose prior to this event. I cannot remember for sure though.

I get the impression that Hotmail is plagued with this kind of problem.

One problem that may have lead to this is that I did not have a strong password. So now I have a stronger password and I hope it does not happen again.