Apple's iTunes strikes a sour note

For the second time since the dawn of the Computer Age, I have been defrauded online. And while neither episode has cost me money, I have paid a price in stress and wasted time.

A couple of nights ago, I was trying to download an App for my iPod touch when my password was rejected time after time, even though I knew I was writing it correctly. The following morning, on a hunch, I checked my online credit-card statement and found three new iTunes transactions, each totaling $40 and change. These certainly weren't mine, so I called my credit-card company, and a fraud squad rep told me the card would be canceled and all copies of it should be shredded. I will get a new card in about a week. Meanwhile, I am being kept busy cancelling all recurring payments with the shredded card, as well as other scheduled payments.

I suspected my password had been breached and  tried to call Apple, but got a recording telling me to e-mail the company. The response was relatively quick but awkward, since I had to keep e-mailing back as other questions arose. My iTunes account was temporarily suspended and the Apple rep informed me that someone had changed both my password and e-mail address. She wrote, "I urge you to contact your financial institution as soon as possible to inquire about canceling the card or account and removing the unauthorized transactions. You should also ask them to launch an investigation into the security of your account.  Your bank or credit card company's fraud department should then contact the iTunes Store to resolve this issue. The iTunes Store cannot reverse the charges." That sounded to me as though the credit-card company has to do most of the work, but what do I know.

Fortunately, the iTunes charges had never passed the temporary authorization stage in my credit-card account and in any event my account has fraud protection. But what a bleeping nuisance. I checked the Internet and found similar stories from other  iTunes customers. Apple, with all its sophisticated technology,  really has to come up with a way to prevent such scamming.

(My other defrauding incident took place on eBay a couple of years ago and involved an evil person who stole my password and had me buying and selling objects for thousands of dollars. I saw no way the defrauder could profit by this and concluded it was done out of sheer malice by someone I don't even know.)

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As if this weren't enough, last night my iPod Shuffle went through the wash and shuffled off to iPod heaven.

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The experts say that you should create passwords that are a combination of letters and numbers and even symbols, that you should have a different password for each site you are subscribed to, and that you should change those passwords frequently. I for one am going to take that advice.

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Such is the power of Halloween in Salem that my Salem State College geezer classes will not be held all next week so that we will not have to deal with the mobs of zombies, ghosts, witches and a**holes descending upon the city.

It's a fat world after all

Many things amazed me during my recent visit to Walt Disney World but none more so than the girth of many of the visitors. I saw more obese people at Disney than even in Las Vegas. Some had rented motorized scooters for $65 a day because they were too bloated even to walk much. And all of this seems to have occurred since I last visited Disney World, about two years ago.

Obesity has become a national epidemic. According to the National Institutes of Health, about two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight (I myself could lose a few pounds) but almost one-third are obese, having an abnormally high proportion of body fat. Overweight and obesity are known risk factors for diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood cholesterol, stroke, hypertension, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and some forms of cancer. I could go on, but you get the idea. All of us who need to do so should strive to lose weight. The lives we save may be our own, and a thinner America will be a better America.