Cyber scams, locked doors, and physical books: a sad story redeemed by flesh-and-blood good news

The world is unnerving these days. Far-away wars rage, politicians more or less ignore the threats of climate change and AI, women die in childbirth, and penguins are losing their Antarctic ice. Closer to home, email scams trick even the most vigilant among us, including, now, me.

REMINDER (and belated note to myself): Always delete an unexpected email message, even (maybe, especially) from a known sender. If you are even moderately concerned, check with the apparent sender via a different communication channel.

These days, the sad truth is that trust cannot be taken for granted, because trust is what is being exploited by the baddies out there. Staying vigilant and questioning just about everything is the best way to stay clean and safe these days.

After having the "party-invite scam" affect one of my email accounts last week, I spent countless hours alerting my contacts, locking down all my accounts, and changing passwords — and I was left with feelings of sadness and grief. Sadness that exploitation is just a keystroke away, and grief about all that we have lost because of technology despite all that we have gained from technology. I won’t go down the rabbit hole of Big Tech Billionaire Bros (I feel they are almost an alien species unto themselves, who inflict their so-called vision on us less wealthy mortals); that is too much for me to contemplate — which maybe plays directly into their plans, I don’t know.

What I do know is that we cannot, must not, drop our guard. Keeping our eye on the ball of our immediate flesh-and-blood/real-life priorities is the best way to be human and to remain human — with all the fallibility and quirks that make (most of) us charming and delightful. Routinized mass email invitations to phantom parties are designed only to infiltrate our inboxes and steal our info; the baddies don’t care about us, they care only about stealing data. I am not alone in having taken a few steps into their game in a moment of misplaced trust, and cold comfort it is to be in that large group of duped humans. I should have known better, because my guard is generally up — and always has been.

When I was about 16, I was home alone so I locked the front door, even though it was the middle of the day. When a friend who was a boy came by, he asked me why on earth I would lock the door in daylight hours. I replied that I didn’t presume I was immune from a home-invasion-assault-crime happening to me and that I wasn’t interested in the police asking me, after something bad like that might have transpired, why I had not kept the front door locked. Even all those decades ago, when I was still writing my homework essays in long hand, I had a sense that being safe meant barring entry through the front door to possible threats that are the reality for all women, young or old.

Letting my guard down then was not an option. And it is not an option today. I keep the front door locked and my email alerts set, now, to super-duper-hyper-vigilant heights. Fingers crossed I can maintain this state successfully through the next scamming attempt — and beyond.

On a much happier note, I am looking forward to the public launch of my handbook, How to be a Writer in Four Steps, this coming Saturday, October 3rd. Details here. I’ll be there in person, with honest-to-goodness physical copies of my book, printed by flesh-and-blood humans right here in Winnipeg. I heaved the boxes myself from their warehouse to my car and then into my home. Photo proof below. It would be grand to see you at my launch!

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.