My Boss’s last day is today. She sits up there as one of the better managers I have worked with. One of these days I’ll try and list them in order. Along with her, there are others whose last week was last week and some of those will also be missed.
Saturday evening, I was up much later than normal and noticed a message come across my phone indicating I had a text message from my bank. I did not think much of it because I have multiple accounts that pull money monthly. I then had another and looked to see if they were legit. I noticed the Lynda.com and knew that was ok but within 30 seconds another popped up and it was from addias.com and two more came in quick succession totaling more than $400.00! I quickly entered my bank account and shut down my debit card and then quickly reported it stolen locking down my account. I ordered a new card with expedite and shut down my computer, going to bed quite upset because I need to update my automatic payments again. I say again because this happened a few months ago but involved only about $5.00.
After sleeping all night and dreaming multiple dreams about this hacking situation I decided to lock down my internet surfing using a VPN. I have heard of NordVPN quite a few times from some people I trust and in my dreams this service was suggested multiple times. This will be the first time I have taken a dream, and did exactly what was suggested, it absolutely worked! I signed up for a three-year contract for a little over a hundred dollars. This service completely hides my computer, assigning a new IP each time with no information logging in their servers. The service will also block any internet activity when I have the service turned off. NordVPN also will cover 6 devices at the same time so I have two iPads, my computer and phone using the VPN currently. I may be able to get my router connected which will cover all the devices using the router and the VPN will count that as one device. I’ll investigate that. The only issue is every time I enter a secure site, credit cards etc., the site thinks you are there for the first time and does it’s two factor authentication which I will live with to prevent this from happening again.
Another thing I am going to do is get a different virtual card when I need to enter a debit card into a site I don’t necessarily trust. Doing this, after I enter the virtual card and the money has been transferred, I will disable that card and create a new one the next time I need it. I think the debit from now on will be used for ATM’s exclusively.
On to coding. I really need to concentrate on finishing the C#, react, Python and Django courses. Because I have Python and particularly C# showing in my LinkedIn profile, I have been getting offers for coding jobs. It will be an exceptionally long time before I will be comfortable accepting any offers for that type of work but now is the time to take the plunge and do it. I find the work fun and rewarding as well.
That was a long one, but a lot happened the last six days, see ya.