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Random Thoughts

ake
me
laugh .

Comedians Al
Franken and
Janeane Garafalo
are now radio talk
show personalities
HARRY
on "Air America
KIRSBAUM
Radio," a newly
Columnist
formed liberal radio
network.
"The right wing has captured
radio," Franken told reporters during
a conference call. "We're going after
them and we're going after them hard."
According to CNN, the network
will launch in New York, Los Angeles,
Chicago and San Francisco, and no
firm deals have been
signed with advertisers.
A quick word of
advice for Al and
Janeane: Keep things
funny.
People like funny.
If you're always
spouting off against
Bush the way Rush did
against Clinton, you
won't last long enough
to open in Detroit.

Make Me Sad

Andy Rooney

There's something that's
just plain wrong in lumping Martha
Stewart into the same mix as chief
executive officers Dennis Kozlowski of
Tyco International, Bernie Ebbers of
WorldCom and Ken Lay and Jeffrey
Skilling of Enron.
Sure, she was a greedy enough to
use insider information to save herself
about $40,000 in trading losses, a sum
equivalent to a 40-cent loss in my
portfolio.
But how does that compare to what
the "Gang of Four" are accused of —
bankrupting their companies and
helping to send the economy into a
tailspin.
If you consider that the fall of
Enron, World Corn and Tyco has
made my 401k equal to what Dennis
spends on two shower curtains, you
have a firm grasp of why I'd rather see
them do some hard time instead of
Martha.
I don't want to end up like Andy
Rooney, 85 years old and still at my
desk.

I have neither the patience nor the
eyebrows for the job.

Swimming With The Phishes

It was late Saturday night and I was
cleaning out the 75 spam messages in
my e-mail that came through the sys-
tem in the previous 24 hours when I
saw something from one of my credit
card companies.
I opened it up into a Web site that
wanted to update some information,
and asked me to punch in my account
name and password.
I was tired and I entered the infor-
mation even though I wasn't sure if I
had the correct name and password or
even if I was registered to access infor-
mation in that Web site, but it was
already too late.
I had just been
"phished," and I didn't
know it yet. I didn't
even know what the
term meant.
According to the cred-
it card customer assis-
tance person I talked to
on the phone a few
minutes later, phishing
has been going on for a
few months.
You open an e-mail,
and you think you're on
a Web site, but you're
not. You're in an e-mail
disguised as a Web site, and the infor-
mation you punch in is like sending
an e-mail to a criminal with a pass-
word and the message, "Here it is: free
access to my account. Go ahead.
Make your day."
The customer assistant assured me
that it probably wouldn't be a prob-
lem, and he canceled my card. To me,
"probably" isn't a very reassuring
word, and I'm still sweating over this.
If you happen to get a similar e-mail
asking you to punch in any account
information, and you don't want to
delete the message, do me a favor.
Punch in some gibberish first: Use
punctuation marks, leave spaces, do
everything that would normally deny
you access.
If it allows your entry anyway,
you're in the wrong place. Delete the
e-maily call the customer assistance
phone number on the back of your
credit card and tell them Harry sent
you. ❑

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