Friday, March 13, 2009

What's the secret password? And "unfriending."

So, because I friend EVERYONE on Facebook, I was faced with the new problem of "unfriending" someone, actually a few someones... but I wanted to be sure they didn't know. Repercussions and all that. So, in googling for an answer to my, "Will someone know if I unfriend them on FACEBOOK question," I found a whole page of people asking for help in stealing passwords.
Yes. Stealing.
Passwords for email accounts, for Facebook and Myspace, for instant messenger accounts. I don't know why I was surprised, I'm sure people hack into accounts all the time, but it seemed so creepy. And the funny thing was people were replying to other's requests and giving relationship advice, like, " Have you tried therapy, asshole?" to "Just trust him, man." And, "You should be asking her about this, not trying to read her mail."

I couldn't help thinking movie plots... girl meets boy, girl and boy connect, girl and boy marry, boy meets up with old frineds on facebook, neglects to check the married box and starts up internet love affair, girl suspects and wants to hack account to prove herself right, girl falls for hacker who exposes cheating boy...

Or something like that.
But it's probably already been done.

And also, you CAN buy software that does effectively hack passwords and keystrokes, and site visits... I won't tell you where. I'm just sayin'.

At any rate, I unfriended and ungrouped and uncluttered my FB, but I was still thinking about the password thing, how I use lots of different ones for all my accounts, how I have to write them down, because I am afraid if I use the password keeper on the computer, I will forget the password to open IT, and then, I will be screwed.
When I forget a password and if I can't find where I wrote it, I have to set it all up again, which in this day requires a security question. Most of them are stupid and I lie.

"What street did you grow up on?"
I say MAIN STREET, because even if I get Alzheimer's, I will know MAIN STREET.

As I was thinking about all of this a friend told me how she had forgotten a password she thought she'd never have to re-use and was mortified when she had to call in to retrieve it, and the security question the guy was required to ask her was, "To whom did you lose your virginity?"
We laughed, but I think she was a little offended when I asked her if she knew the answer.

2 comments:

Churlita said...

I had a guy unfriend me once. He was playing games and wanted me to notice he had unfriended me and get upset about it. I didn't really care. I was the one who didn't want to go out with him. Duh.

The only way I knew, was that I had one less friend and some of his comments disappeared.

dmarks said...

Good riddance, I think.