Episode 3
I Saw What You Did and Know Who You Are
I think most kids today, and many adults, think the internet was invented so they can TikTok, Instagram, Tweet, Facebook, or show the world what color Ashley painted her nails this month.
They would probably be shocked to know that the internet was originally developed around 1958 for research and sharing of scientific knowledge between universities, libraries, or other places of stored knowledge.
If a doctor’s patient, for example, came in with a disorder they’d never seen before, they could type a long set of codes in a compter, searching a closed-loop internet for treatment or a cure. You know, important things.
When I was in my late teens, I remember walking into a Radio Shack (an electronics store probably unbeknownst to anyone under 40) to buy something when I noticed a kid typing away on a keyboard, staring at a miniature TV screen.
He was keying in letters, which seemed like jumbled English. At first, I thought he was just having fun scribbling on the screen, but he looked serious and would backspace to correct some type of error.
When he stopped for a moment, I asked, “Do you know what you are doing?” He said he was coding a computer program and then spent about 30 seconds speaking in tongues or another language explaining it to me, which I could not even begin to translate. I knew at that moment I needed to learn computers fast or perhaps end up shoveling animal dung for the rest of my life.
After looking around for schools, I found a private college that had a program for people like me, who fell between the cracks of learning computers.
By investing in a two-year program, I would learn basic electronic technology, computer science, biomedical technology, and audio engineering. It was this last course that struck my actual interest since I had heard a record where it sounded like the audio engineer caused the sound from violins to rise up off the floor and then drip from the ceiling. Fascinating, at least for me, as I often found myself in ganja-smoke-filled rooms.
The first day of college class was a Monday and held about 30 people, some older than me and some younger, and the instructor taught us how to add. I’m thinking, 'You have to be kidding me. This person is going to teach me the inner workings and wonders of electronics and computers? Am I in the right class?'
On the second day, we learned how to subtract. The third day, multiply; the fourth, divide. The following day, or Friday, we had a test on what we’d learned, and on the next Monday, we lost half the class.
This was my first inclination that the guv had a conflict of interest in indoctrinating kids with their demonic-controlled public school agenda. It was their plan to keep people stupid by dumbing down education so they could keep us under their thumb of rule, constantly feeding us through the nipples of the Demoncratic party. So far for the classmates who failed the first week, it seemed it was working.
(If you ever want to put a kid in a tizzy who is working as a fast-food cashier, and your bill is, say, $5.25, give him $10.25 and ask him how much change you should get before he types it into his cash register for the answer.) Oh please, tell me you don't know the answer.
The next few weeks, learning in a private school class, began accelerating, and I quickly found out about atoms, electrons, magnetism, and eventually nuclear energy. For the first time in my life, I knew I was learning something I should have already known.
In the computer science class, I learned binary math, how computers worked in binary (which much later gave me “The Theory of Everything”), and basic computer language. I finally felt great relief knowing what the kid in Radio Shack was doing and saying.
One day, I was doing an assignment in coding, trying to get a simple text to scroll and loop across the screen. Suddenly, a white dash shot up from the bottom of the screen and took out a letter of text.
It ticked me off at first until I found the errant piece of code, which was probably a virus, that caused the “missile” of the dash that shot from the bottom. I put the code in a loop, and then it was funny watching the resulting text get eliminated by launching white dashes.
I soon figured out how to get the dashed missiles to wipe out letters at will. The only letter left was a large capital V, and it looked like an alien spaceship.
After a few more hours of coding, I was shooting dashed missiles at alien V’s and having a lot of fun.
I then turned the code into the instructor for extra credit. He sent back a D letter grade. When I confronted him, he asked me what the hell I was doing.
I didn’t have a name for it yet but said I was playing a game on the computer, to which he replied, “Who would ever want to waste their time playing a computer game!”
I figured he knew what he was talking about (mistake number 1), and I eventually gave the code to a smarter classmate to play with. It would be nice to think he took the code and invented video games.
While in the audio engineering class, the winds quickly went out of my sails when I learned I would set up mics and stands for at least 5 years before I would ever get behind the recording board.
This wasn’t going to happen, and later I knew I should have done more with my biomedical training with a job offer from the Mayo Clinic, but I didn’t (mistake number 2).
During this time, a company came in requesting students join their telecommunications business part-time after class. I took advantage of their offer because it allowed me to go to school during the morning and then apply my newly learned trade secrets, sans computer games, in the afternoon and get paid. It was at this company that I learned about the internet, and the rest, as they say, is history, as I began my research.
A few years ago, a data collection company, mylife.com, emailed me with an ad showing they had not only my personal information but also information about my family. They strongly suggested I sign up and pay to verify the information was correct, since there was also criminal information.
I knew I wasn’t a criminal, so I went to their site and searched for what info they had. What I saw was what they sent me, and I would have to pay to see what “criminal” information they had.
I smelled a scam right away and emailed them to remove all the information they had on me in their account.
Instead, they sent the same ad again, and after 4 more requests to remove my info and 4 more replies with ads, I determined to find out if there were other scam data collectors out there.
It was then that I discovered my unauthorized name and personal information were on at least another dozen sites. However, after my requests to remove my info from their sites, they did so either immediately or within 24 hours. I had no idea how any of these sites got my info since I never joined or offered information to any of the social accounts or anywhere else on the web.
One site volunteered that they purchased the information they got from government sites. So then it clicked, and after a few more days of searching, I found out it was the state selling my personal information for the state’s profit.
Previously, when I went to the DMV to get my driver’s license renewed, they forced me to provide all of my personal information, including my date of birth and Social Security number.
When I argued the SSN was for social security only, they said I wouldn’t get my license without providing it. After they had all of my personal information, it went up for sale to data brokers to fatten their state tax coffers.
To say I was pissed was an understatement, especially knowing how the guv was already illegally controlling us by ignoring the Constitution, which was supposed to protect our rights of privacy.
I then contacted the Dept. of Justice and a senator, first to get my info off the data site that refused or kept mocking me, stating they removed it when they didn’t, and neither did they after I also contacted the BBB.
The DOJ eventually kicked in and is now prosecuting the site that wouldn’t remove my info because others got scammed by giving them money to remove their false data. Today, as I write this, I believe there isn’t any data broker site that has my private info, but scammers are born every minute.
The senator was supposed to tell me what he would do to stop states from selling our personal info and replied with an auto-response letter stating how dedicated they are at keeping scammers from elders and others.
BS, they will not quit selling our personal info when they steal millions of dollars outside of taxes without our permission.
I don’t know how to sue the states to stop and give us refunds for all the damage they’ve done to seniors and others by selling our private and personal information without our permission. So if there is a lawyer reading this that knows how, please contact me.
But, since I never volunteered a drop of information to anyone, how much more do scammers who scour the social accounts know about the kids and people from Instagram and other sites and can see everything they did and know more about you than you do!
They are good, damn good at posing as someone you can trust, and then run with your cash and never see it again.
Let’s use the internet for its original intent of making us smarter, and don’t allow scammers to make us more stupid. The bullies are everywhere.
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