I’ve been having problems with AOL email — they make me do a word identification every time I send a message to prove that I’m human and not a spammer. I’ve contacted them several times, and the issue still isn’t resolved, but I had to laugh when I got this message from them today: “Please email us back so we can escalate your issue.” That’s exactly what I need, isn’t it, for the issue to be escalated?
That’s not the only problem I’ve been having lately. In fact, there are so many, it seems as if the internet is under attack. Or maybe it’s me that’s being attacked by the internet.
Smashwords.com, where my books are available in all ebook formats, was out of service for a day or so.
Facebook wouldn’t let me log in for several hours today. They say it was for site maintenance, but they could just as easily be retaliating against me for my article, Big Brother, Thy Name is Facebook.
I can’t post comments on Blogger. They keep telling me that I got the word identification thing wrong, even though I know I didn’t. One time I tried to post a comment more than a dozen times. Normally I would have given up long before that, but it was a guest post by one of my blog friends. I never did get the comment posted.
I lost the ability to log into hot mail for several hours.
I lost my internet service a couple of days ago. Couldn’t log in for hours.
There were some other minor issues that I wouldn’t have thought twice about a few days ago, but now I wonder — is it me? Should I be worried?
Bertram's Blog 
February 16, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Hi Pat, Just because you feel paranoid doesn’t mean it’s all in your head. I left a message for you on some other parallel universe yesterday. I am not going to use FB anymore as anything I need to say can be done on my website or via email. I’m working on a FB farewell address to my friends and family re future contact info. WITH YOUR PERMISSION, I planned on forwarding your blog to them as explanation. Cathy
February 16, 2012 at 8:44 pm
You are not paranoid. Big brother is watching. And you may want to run a malware detector on your computer. Other than that, it’s a wonder these things work at all.
February 17, 2012 at 6:56 am
“Escalate” is customer service speak for giving more attention to solving your problem, maybe moving it up to someone with more authority to do something about it. And definitely run that malware scan because it does sound like someone is messing with you, I was recently hacked and it turns out it was the hackers that cleaned out my contacts list, not a problem with yahoo so . . . warrants looking into.
February 17, 2012 at 9:00 am
Well no wonder nothing ever gets done. Escalate also means to exacerbate the problem.
I ran a malware/virus scan, even called Trend Micro (the supplier) and they said there is no way a virus in my computer could affect an email service that I access online. It can only affect it if I used Outlook or Windows Mail.
February 17, 2012 at 7:02 am
The above being said, I sometimes think this whole internet thing is analogous to the Tower of Babel and will ultimately be more divisive than unifying and then I wonder how far the Atlanteans got before their continent was submerged and then I wonder is there really a god? Who? What? maybe we are all just someone’s computer game? Actually this all brings to mind a cartoon in The New Yorker that caught my 7 year old attention because it was a kid watching himself and his family on a TV screen all of them sitting around watching a TV screen, within a TV screen, etc. etc. Television was the big new thing in the early fifties.
February 17, 2012 at 7:39 am
Sounds like the beginnings of a story there, Sandy 🙂