Almost Got Me...

I received an email today:

Hello Your package has been returned to the USPS office. Reason: "Incorrect delivery address" Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office. Thank you.
USPS Global Services.

Sounds good, I'll just download this file and...

Wait.

What package? I didn't send anything. And... a .zip file? Curious. And... the email says USPS, but it's marked with a "via srs.kundenserver.de."

All this stuff tips off a savvy e-mail user. Something's not right. So I did what I usually do in these situations...

To Google!

And I find this: Ups Virus Warning

So be careful this holiday season. Good rule of thumb... never download a .zip file. Ever.

Love Of Deep Dish Pizza May Have Killed CIA Agents, Informants In Iran, Lebanon

This is not a funny story: CIA Spies Caught, Fear Execution

If these agents are executed, it's a tragedy of epic proportions. If the government of Iran can somehow put a kibosh on the killings (perhaps in exchange for recent sanctions against Iran being reconsidered), it's still a major blow to American intelligence operations in the Middle East.

The craziest part is that the spies may have been compromised due to the location where they repeatedly (and seemingly without deviation) chose to meet:

In Beirut, two Hezbollah double agents pretended to go to work for the CIA. Hezbollah then learned of the restaurant where multiple CIA officers were meeting with several agents, according to the four current and former officials briefed on the case. The CIA used the codeword "PIZZA" when discussing where to meet with the agents, according to U.S. officials. Two former officials describe the location as a Beirut Pizza Hut. A current US official denied that CIA officers met their agents at Pizza Hut.

From there, Hezbollah's internal security arm identified at least a dozen informants, and the identities of several CIA case officers...

One former senior intelligence official told ABC News that CIA officers ignored warnings that the operation could be compromised by using the same location for meetings with multiple assets.

"We were lazy and the CIA is now flying blind against Hezbollah," the former official said.

Lazy? Or just in love with deep dish... or stuffed crust? It's not something to laugh about, but something that just makes you shake your head and wonder. Isn't it common sense not to always meet in the same place?

After all, the pizza's not even that good.

This never would have happened if they just ordered in Domino's.

Joe Paterno And The General's Daughter

I have quite a few Penn State friends. Did they all initially have rational reactions to the news that their college was covering up for a serial child rapist? No. But it seems, days later, that cooler heads have prevailed, and most of them realize that Joe Paterno, as beloved as he was, had no choice but to leave.

However, school spirit dies hard, and I get the sense that many of them still don't quite understand why they should be mad at Paterno, the kindly old man who "lived in the same McKee St. house for decades. Chatted with us as he walked to practice. Ate ice cream with us at the Creamery. We have studied in the new library wing his money helped build. We have visited the sports museum and spiritual center he also helped build. We have seen him cheering on other Penn State athletes..."

I suggest these people rent "The General's Daughter."



It's not a great movie by any means, filmed at the tail end of John Travolta's cinematic comeback, right before Battlefield Earth sent him back to the C-list. But the flick, about a rape that occurs on a military base, has a plot not dissimilar from what happened at Penn State. A university, in particular a large, football-crazy institution like Penn State, resembles a military outfit in many ways, except with more keggers and pot smoking. In fact, the most popular defense of Joe Paterno's actions, invoked on this lawyer's blog, for example, invokes the phrase "After contacting his chain of command superiors, he let them do their jobs."

In The General's Daughter, John Travolta investigates after a highly respected general's daughter is found naked, legs and arms spread out and staked into the ground with tent poles, strangled to death. Yikeys.

Now, if you don't like spoilers, you might want to skip past this next paragraph and the video.

What Travolta discovers is that the general's daughter was actually recreating something that had happened to her back at West Point. During a training exercise, she was gang-raped by a group of soldiers. She reported this to a man she loved and trusted. Her father, the general. What did this man she loved and trusted do? He covered it up. Thinking it would be tough to get a rape conviction, and not wanting to sully the reputation of West Point, he makes the whole thing go away. The daughter, scarred from the incident, recreates the scene years later to give her father "something he can't cover up," but her father walks away, leaving her there. The daughter is then discovered by one of her original rapists, who kills her. Travolta, who previously admired and respected the general, lays the blame where it falls:



Travolta and his partner, meanwhile, have no problem tracking down and convicting all of the men who raped the general's daughter... if only they'd been able to do it sooner. Meanwhile, the person who could have saved the general's daughter finds his career destroyed, his life's work tarnished.

This is what a cover-up does. It allows an already tragic situation to get far worse. In both The General's Daughter, and at Penn State, a trusted, beloved figure had the power to save lives-- and they didn't.

Maybe Paterno truly did believe, at first, that the "chain of command" would remedy the situation. But as the years passed (and Jerry Sandusky raped more and more boys), he certainly could no longer believe that. Did his love of Penn State, and his friendship with his longtime co-coach trump his concern for a child's welfare?

Why should Penn Staters feel angry at Paterno? The same reason John Travolta feels so much anger towards the "villain" in The General's Daughter. This "villain" may not have committed the actual rape and murder, but he betrayed the trust, love, and respect of the person who came to him for help. In a place where "Joe Pa" is the general, he was the one the witness of this rape went to for advice on what to do. The right thing for the child would have been to call the police. All of us know this. We also know, sadly, what "Joe Pa" did instead.

So, Penn State fans, watch The General's Daughter and when the credits roll, ask yourself this: Do you forgive the "villian?" Or are you as angry as Travolta is? Then ask yourself if what Paterno did is really so different.


Actually, it is.

What Paterno did happened in real life.

What Happens When You Fall For The Free Starbucks/iPad/Anything Facebook Scam

Never a good sign when you log into Facebook and your newsfeed looks like this:

While it would be wonderful to believe that somehow, EVERY SINGLE PERSON YOU KNOW, is in on a GREAT, UNBELIEVABLE FREE DEAL, when you see this sort of thing happening, red flags should immediately go up.

First, you should be struck at how many of your friends, including people you barely know, are touting the deal. This may include people who normally don't post things at all. People who haven't posted a status update in years. Why now?

Second, look at that deal. $50! That's like 10 coffees! Unbelievable! Yes, unbelievable.

Third, look at the web address. Something odd. While they all sound, vaguely coffee-related... they're all different. And don't have that comforting ".com" address.

This is because it's a scam. Here's what happens when you click it.

First, it insists that you share the deal with all of your friends in order to "activate" the freebee. This is why you see so many people sharing the link. This step comes before people may realize things are amiss. Sheeple! Bah bah!

Then, it leads to a site that asks you to take a survey. This site surreptitiously loads tracking software onto your computer (most browsers will not warn you about this). It does this EVEN IF YOU DON'T FILL OUT THE SURVEY. From this moment on, any move you make online will be tracked by whomever created the survey page. And guess what, it wasn't Starbucks.

The survey will ask for personal information. This information is used to figure out how old you are, where you live, what your email address is, what your passwords are, what credit cards and banks you use... etc. With this full portrait, some guy in Nigeria, or elsewhere, can easily impersonate you online. They may use your information to hack into your email and accounts, steal money from you and the people you know.

If you clicked on the link:
 
1. Immediately clear your cookies and internet cache.

2. Run a (reliable) anti virus program to make sure your computer hasn't been infected with malware (bad software).

3. Then change your Facebook password, email password, and any other passwords you believe may have been compromised (any site you visited after clicking the link).

4. Finally, warn others that the link is indeed a scam. Report it to Facebook.

In the end, a scam is very easy to spot. If Starbucks, or any other business, was to offer a deal, they'd offer it on their official Facebook page or website. If the deal is coming from somewhere else, it's not legit.

Second, look at what they're giving away: $50 Fifty Dollars!?!?! A free iPad???! These are incredibly generous giveaways, far beyond what one would expect from an American business (have you even been following Occupy Wall Street?) Even Groupon only takes off 50%, and that's often fraudulent.

Starbucks, Apple, and other companies would never give away so much of their product for free. Scammers rely on American greed to spread their scams far and wide. If they simply offered a 10% off coupon, their scam would seem more realistic, but it wouldn't be enough to motivate a lot of people to fill out the whole survey and go through the entire process.

If you see a deal that's too good to be true, it is. That's a rule of thumb you should always follow.

If you really want to be a wishful thinker, at least do yourself the favor of Googling the deal, and visiting the corporate website first. You can check out mainstream media too-- if a deal this big really was being offered, it would certainly be covered.

Think before you link. You'll be thankful you did.

Who's Searching For You On Facebook?

Ever want to know who's looking you up on Facebook but not requesting you as a friend? Just click on "People You May Know" on your Facebook's homepage.

Facebook draws these "People You May Know" from several different sources, not just your email contacts or address book.

"People You May Know helps you find people you are likely to know. We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported using friend finder and many other factors."

The most obvious of these other sources, and least controversial, is people with whom you have mutual friends. Some kid who has 45 friends in common with you is most likely someone you know.

Then of course, Facebook knows who works at the same company, or goes to the same school as you, from the info that appears in your profile.

Perhaps less obvious, they also know your IP address, so people using the same internet connection as you may pop up (now you know who's stealing your WiFi.)

However, you may notice suggested people with whom you have no mutual friends. People who aren't in your address book. People who share no school or affiliation that you've listed on your profile. People who have never used your internet connection. You may notice, though, that some of these people do, in fact, look familiar. They may be an acquaintance, a waiter at a restaurant you like, your landlord. You don't even know their last name! How the heck did Facebook know they might know you?

Does Zuckerberg have a zeppelin in the sky from which he watches and records our every human interaction?

Possibly. But that's not how they come to suggest these people. They suggest them because that person has searched for your name on Facebook. According to the internet message board chatter.

Take a moment for that to sink in. Now recall all the people you may have looked up on Facebook, including ex-girlfriends, the hot barista down at the Starbucks, that guy who lives in apartment 12 B. If you typed their name into Facebook's search box, you will pop up on their "People You May Know" list.

Just remember, when you search on Facebook, you're not searching anonymously. You're tipping off whoever you're searching for. You're letting them know you've been looking for their profile.

Rumors are circulating that Facebook is even sending emails to these people, saying that you'd like them to join Facebook. While not confirmed, this is pretty alarming.

Up until now, most of the warnings surrounding Facebook have centered around the information you choose to reveal. This however, goes much deeper-- Facebook using information you had no idea was being revealed at all... and giving you no choice to protect your privacy.