My iPhone was hacked. Again. Over the last five years or so, I have had my computer hacked a number of times and my phone hacked twice. I know exactly who hacked my computer. When I was using and not being up front about my HIV status...someone to whom I had disclosed my status hacked my computer and was sending information out about me to potential hook ups. The cause was noble...though the person doing it was ignoble to the core. I always found his moral superiority suspect since this particular human being had been my number one meth dealer and had no qualms about supplying me (and anyone else with money to pay) with drugs. The irony (and hypocrisy) was something to boggle the mind. Yet, it was what it was, and that time has long past.
About six months ago, my iPhone started doing something peculiar. In addition to having a pass code to unlock an iPhone, there is also an additional pass code to unlock the SIM card. I discovered this by accident once when I was monkeying with the settings on my phone, hit the wrong button, and my SIM card locked itself. The first time your card locks itself, you have to call AT&T to get the factory built in pass code in order to unlock the phone. Once you unlock it the first time, it prompts you to enter a healthy numeric code that you will remember.
Did it. Set the new code. Thought it was the end of the story.
Then, about a month after I'd first changed the code...I turned on my phone one morning to find that the SIM card was locked. Now, normally, the card only locks in response to user input or a failed attempt to access the SIM card. But, I shrugged it off to some random glitch with the phone and entered my pass code.
The code didn't work.
So, I called AT&T and asked them for the code, which they happily provided. I entered the code, the phone unlocked, and I hung up with the good woman at AT&T.
No sooner had I hung up the phone than I looked down and the damn phone's SIM card was locked again. So, I entered in the new SIM code that I had just chosen, and the phone wouldn't open.
How curious.
So I called AT&T again, and the woman gave me the code (which was not the one I had chosen nor the one that she had given me before), and we did the unlock game again. This time she asked me to stay on the phone during the process. The phone unlocked, I set a new pass code, and about a minute later the damn thing locked itself again.
Once again I tried to unlock it with the new pass code that I'd chosen, but no dice. The woman on the phone looked up the SIM code and lo and behold it was another completely different code.
She then informed me that nothing like this had ever happened to her before in her x number of years working at AT&T and specifically with the iPhone. So, due the wonders of modern technology, she executed a three-way call with an Apple iPhone representative. We got a gentleman from the Genius Bar at Apple on the phone and went through the whole process again with exactly the same results.
Dude was dumbfounded. This had never happened to him either. In the meantime, I had done my Inter Webs based research and found out about iPhone hacking. I suggested this as a cause. At first, neither of them really wanted to admit it was a possibility. But after a few more minutes...they both agreed...something shady was going on with my phone....so shady in fact...that they paid for me to get a new SIM card, and I almost had to give a pinky swear that I wouldn't tell anyone else about this ever.
Steve Jobs is the Don of the Apple Mafia. If he makes you an offer, and you say no, you end up as a SIM card in an iPad. Just saying.
The point ended up becoming moot about that iPhone when I dropped it in a toilet bowl during a Pride party in June. You can't hack a phone when you can't dial the 0 button. Just saying.
So, in July, I got a brand spanking new iPhone. It has worked flawlessly without any craziness or magic SIM card moments.
That is until today.
Today, I texted David to let him now that I'd seen "Ted on the street."
David texted back, "Who's Ted?"
I responded, "Joe's Boyfriend."
A few moments later, my phone went off with a text alert. I opened up the phone to David's response of "Ah."
Except between my text, "Joe's boyfriend," and David's text of "Ah," there was a text, supposedly from me, that said, "FBI."
Now I promise you that after hitting send on the "Joe's boyfriend," that I clicked the lock button on my phone as I was in a meeting with my boss. No second text did I send. Which means that either Carrie Anne from the Exorcist left the TV and ended up in my iPhone or the motherfucker has been hacked again.
I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do I do I do believe in spooks.
But I also believe in fucked up hackers that need to get the hell up out of my shit.
So, once again, I am faced with a piece of expensive ass technology that has been iRaped by an iHacker that can kiss my iAss.
Oops, did I say that out loud?
Apple likes to pretend that their shit is invulnerable, but last fall a couple was awarded $15,000 because they demonstrated how you could hack an iPhone, without ever seeing or touching the target iPhone, using a glitch in the Safari Browser.
Ladies and gentleman gird up your loins and put a firewall on your iPhones because there are stank biznatches out there that are passive aggressive hacking sons of bitches that like to cause mental drama for fun.
I'm just saying.
Tomorrow me and Lady Betty Ignatious Pennybottom (aka my iPhone) are going to take a little trip to AT&T for a long conversation about iPhone security.
But let ye all be warned....don't buy the hype....don't put anything on your iPhone that you wouldn't mind being broadcast during the middle of the Superbowl like Janet's wardrobe malfunction.
Ye have been warned.
(PS And if the FBI did hack my phone...you better have a warrant...and isn't there a crazy preacher in Florida that you should be harassing? I'm just saying.)_
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Supreme Court Decides that Wal-Mart is a Person
Fuck me three ways til Tuesday.
Today has been a hell of a day. First the racist, classist, and ugly young woman working at the Genius Bar at Apple, without looking at my brand new iPhone 3Gs, suggested that "some people," fall and smash their phones on purpose when new ones come out, so that they can get an upgrade. Therefore, she was going to have to charge me $200 to replace the glass front of my phone...which...by the way...was the only thing broken on the damn thing...the LCD and touch screens worked just fine. And I did my research, the glass costs $24. So I guess that's $175 for labor. Fuck you Genius Bar.
And then, I come home, and lo and behold I log into Facebook only to find that the Supreme Court has all the balls that seem to be missing from the Democratic members of Congress. Against 100 years of precedence, the Roberts Court (may your dick shrivel and fall off) went right on ahead and said it was unconstitutional and the court saw no compelling argument for limiting in any way the right of corporations (oh and unions...throwing the left an old, run down, and chewed on bone) to speak freely and spend freely to promote their speech during political campaigns.
Excuse me?
The U.S. Supreme Court has lost its damn mind. This is what I love...it was the Supreme Court that magically decided way back in the 1880s and 1890s that corporations, which didn't really exist in 1776, were actually entitled to all the rights and privileges of a living, breathing human being. Successive court rulings places some limits on the ability of corporations to engage in direct political speech and advocacy. But the Bush Supreme Court that we now have went on ahead and bucked 100 years of court precedence and said...what the fuck...Wal-Mart can run America...party on Exxon Valdez and Dow Jones why don't you and DuPont just go on ahead and pick a couple of your stock holders names out of a hat and they can be U.S. Senators.
Basically, the judges wrote a total of five different opinions on the ruling totally 175 pages. I can boil all that down for you into one short letter.
And you see, thanks to our wonderful system of checks and balances, which, since Bush took office, really hasn't worked worth a damn...this opinion rips apart state laws in roughly half of the states and writes corporations a blank check signed Chief Justice Roberts.
I think I am going to vomit.
The midterm elections next year are going to ridiculous. Special interests, labor unions, and corporations spent $1 billion in the 2008 presidential elections and that was WITH spending limits. Every CEO on Wall Street just got a fat dripping chubby when this news came down.
I can smell the end of the farce that has been called "democracy" in the United States. But, let me be clear, this country has never been a democracy and now, finally, the mask is coming off and the corporate dictatorship that has run this nation for the last century is going to show its true face. Time for the American Revolution Part Deux.
(Though I would rather pretend this didn't really just happen, here is a link to an article with more and less angry details.)
And, if you are as pissed off as I am, there is something you can do. Sign this petition asking Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban corporate personhood.
Today has been a hell of a day. First the racist, classist, and ugly young woman working at the Genius Bar at Apple, without looking at my brand new iPhone 3Gs, suggested that "some people," fall and smash their phones on purpose when new ones come out, so that they can get an upgrade. Therefore, she was going to have to charge me $200 to replace the glass front of my phone...which...by the way...was the only thing broken on the damn thing...the LCD and touch screens worked just fine. And I did my research, the glass costs $24. So I guess that's $175 for labor. Fuck you Genius Bar.
And then, I come home, and lo and behold I log into Facebook only to find that the Supreme Court has all the balls that seem to be missing from the Democratic members of Congress. Against 100 years of precedence, the Roberts Court (may your dick shrivel and fall off) went right on ahead and said it was unconstitutional and the court saw no compelling argument for limiting in any way the right of corporations (oh and unions...throwing the left an old, run down, and chewed on bone) to speak freely and spend freely to promote their speech during political campaigns.
Excuse me?
The U.S. Supreme Court has lost its damn mind. This is what I love...it was the Supreme Court that magically decided way back in the 1880s and 1890s that corporations, which didn't really exist in 1776, were actually entitled to all the rights and privileges of a living, breathing human being. Successive court rulings places some limits on the ability of corporations to engage in direct political speech and advocacy. But the Bush Supreme Court that we now have went on ahead and bucked 100 years of court precedence and said...what the fuck...Wal-Mart can run America...party on Exxon Valdez and Dow Jones why don't you and DuPont just go on ahead and pick a couple of your stock holders names out of a hat and they can be U.S. Senators.
Basically, the judges wrote a total of five different opinions on the ruling totally 175 pages. I can boil all that down for you into one short letter.
Dear U.S. Democracy,
Fuck you. Go buy a McDonald's Happy Meal.
Love,
SCOTUS
And you see, thanks to our wonderful system of checks and balances, which, since Bush took office, really hasn't worked worth a damn...this opinion rips apart state laws in roughly half of the states and writes corporations a blank check signed Chief Justice Roberts.
I think I am going to vomit.
The midterm elections next year are going to ridiculous. Special interests, labor unions, and corporations spent $1 billion in the 2008 presidential elections and that was WITH spending limits. Every CEO on Wall Street just got a fat dripping chubby when this news came down.
I can smell the end of the farce that has been called "democracy" in the United States. But, let me be clear, this country has never been a democracy and now, finally, the mask is coming off and the corporate dictatorship that has run this nation for the last century is going to show its true face. Time for the American Revolution Part Deux.
(Though I would rather pretend this didn't really just happen, here is a link to an article with more and less angry details.)
And, if you are as pissed off as I am, there is something you can do. Sign this petition asking Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban corporate personhood.
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