When Ben Franklin said “Indeed we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” he wasn’t being flip.
Every man who signed the Declaration understood he might also be signing his own ticket to the gallows. (Yet not one representative of the Thirteen Colonies refused to do so.)
20-some years ago, I volunteered to do a pro-animal research ad campaign for the Foundation for Biomedical Research. It got a lot of media coverage, won a lot of awards, and royally pissed off PETA supporters. (I still have their death threat letters in a scrapbook.)
Recently, I wrote a blog post it. And ever since then, I’ve had the feeling someone’s hacked my computer and installed icky stuff on it.
(It wouldn’t be hard to do. Until last week my password was “password.”)
This afternoon, a time-sensitive business proposal sent to a new client (using Apple Mail) didn’t go through. So I logged in to my Gmail account using Safari.
What I discovered turned a mild concern about malware into full-fledged paranoia.
The message I’d sent from my Mac had been (1) thrown in the Gmail trash and (2) replaced by a new one that was almost the same.
The one small – but important – difference?
The client’s email address had been changed just enough to make my time-sensitive ad proposal undeliverable.
I knoooow. It sounds unbelievable to me too! Kind of like something you’d see on CBS’ Person of Interest. But I grabbed a screenshot of the hack. So I know my 58-year-old mind isn’t playing tricks on me. (And hey, if White House Security can’t keep hackers from getting into Michelle Obama’s account, are any of us really safe?)
Anyway, here’s the point of the longest blog post I’ve ever written:
Does anyone know a Mac security specialist who is pro-animal research and more knowledgeable than this hacker with an allegiance to PETA?
If yes, have them call me asap. To the best of my knowledge, my phone lines haven’t been tapped. Yet.
DAVID WOJDYLA
W: 312-236-3800 | C: 312-545-5883 | H: 847-277-1959
We’ve always told clients, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But now that our agency is on the receiving end of that advice, well, I’m not so sure. Would you call them back?
and vertising 