IS THIS THE PARTY TO WHOM I AM EMAILING?

It’s an advantage to be a writer who blogs because every troubling or pesky incident offers plenty of stuff to discuss — and cuss.  The internet alone is a rich inexhaustible problem but I try to stick with what I know, which is my internet “provider” which is 3rivers.net which is a rural telephone cooperative that dates back to the days of crank (the kind with a handle) boxes on the wall that were mounted at a convenient height for men.  My aunt always had to stand on tiptoe and shout to transmit.  

My grandfather derived great amusement from using the bell code that signalled who was being called.  The caller used the crank handle Morse Code fashion, mixing longs and shorts.  My gleeful Irish grandfather would add more longs or shorts so the wrong person answered the phone.  Everyone was on party lines then because it was farm land and only one wire reached out along the road.  Soon everyone on that road was mad at my grandfather.  He used to run for office and wonder why no one voted for him.

Things haven’t changed that much since the old days, esp out in the boonies.  There are people here who haven’t adapted to industrialization, still preferring horses to tractors.  Since this is Indian country, there may still be people who prefer dogs to horses.  The telephone system in Valier is not that much ahead of the days when telephone signals were sometimes sent down fence lines in the actual barbed wire.  My computer internet access is landline copper wire, not optical fiber.  I hear various things about the switching system.  So we’ve got two systems to mesh: the old gradually upgrading telephone and the new webbed mix of satellite, microwave hilltop towers, and various kinds of wires, all with their own requirements and assumptions.

But the hardest part to manage is the “wetware” — the part that’s living humans.  Consider the password conundrum that is supposed to provide more security but simply provides more opportunities to game the system.  I was called at the beginning of the workday (which is for me still sleep time since I do my best writing at three or four AM) to ask me for a new password because of problems with security.  

I cannot think of new passwords when I’m still wandering the labyrinths of dreams.  I’d be hard pressed to remember I had a phone call.  Anyway, I’ve already exhausted the supply of names of pets, favorite teachers, preferred foods, etc.  I’m told that there are software programs that can easily discover one’s passwords.  I may have to get one of those programs. When this craze started I designed a form to put into a 3-ring binder.  There are 25 entries per page and I’ve had to change so many so often that I’ve got six pages of passwords.  At least they’re in chronological order so I can tell which is the most recent.

The dark side of being a writer is that I do a lot of online research, which generates a lot of passwords.  Also, I was an ordained minister (still in good standing) and address taboo subjects, which are the ones needing analysis and consciousness-raising.  (Like the Internet.)  But they set off alarms in the minds of rural folks whose worst sin is picking their noses.

This 3rivers office person (very nice person) who called asked for the new password over the phone.  That’s not very secret.  When weeks ago I lost my password for my 3rivers account (forgot to put it in the binder), they refused to give it to me and said I would have to come up with a new one — over the phone.  So if I were an operative of China, I would get my nephew to work in the phone office and every time someone called in to get a new password, I’d write it in a little notebook and have it handy for accessing that account myself or for sending to some official.

Of course, the techies working on email have the capacity to enter and read any account stream at will.  Management stopped letting outsiders into the work space when they realized visitors could see techies running interesting communication through their screens when times were slow.  In fact, to be helpful, a techie often has to come online with you and sort out the glitches.  So I asked what measures are taken to check out these tech people, not just for skills but for honesty in dealing with confidential material.  I mean, I know that most stuff is just boring household chat, but once in a while there must be materials worth blackmail.

Extortion is also a good way to make money, since there are a thousand companies out there capable of creating a “block list” also called “black list” which means they can shut down one’s account.  This is supposed to be because one’s communication is insecure or otherwise faulty.  Most commonly I get shut down because I typed something into the wrong place in the connection software— or didn’t.  Since I’m a MAC user, the techie I get is sometimes stumped because the majority of the systems are Windows.  They take a moral attitude towards this.  

So I have a friend who lives in a narrow forest valley in Idaho.  The only dependable provider for his internet, which is the basis of his business, is the satellite outfit called Hughes or BlueSky.  They have a bad reputation with Barracuda, who blocks them — sometimes.  

Which brings us to two new problems.  These flows of signal are so easy to modify that they can be adjusted to handle traffic density.  This is why I work in the middle of the night:  at that hour all the features of the programs are generally available because traffic is thin.  When it gets thick, features get dropped out.  Capriciously, from my point of view.  When the traffic is overwhelming enough, there begin to be warnings and then even a shut-down.  Users tend to assume that internet service is there and consistent.  Wrong.  In fact, in rural areas the electricity, water, and gas don’t always flow evenly either.

The other issue is sub-contracting, and strangely the security aspects of email are the ones the company sub-contracts.  The nanny filter meant to keep out porn and SPAM is contracted by 3rivers to Barracuda.  When I was having troubles, I went direct to Barracuda, but their contract with 3rivers is entirely separate from individual contacts.  No one had access to both aspects so they couldn’t tell me if there was interference between the two systems.  I set them as “low” as I can since at 78 I’m unlikely to be shocked

The other service contracted out is the hiring of techies which is done in this case by TrueVision Net.  Their focus is on skills, not on honesty or reliability.  Like telephone help-desk answering businesses, the humans might be anyone.  In fact, one little scandal developed (it didn’t involve any of the companies named here) when it was discovered that a telephone business was using prison help.  Some of them had developed a remarkable ability to remember VISA numbers.

Management level jobs are usually a matter of experience and therefore are older people, so that much of the country’s supervision is still done by people who have little or no experience or ease with computers.  But the “kids” on the first line grew up playing vid games and possibly even hacking for fun.  When I called back the office person at 3rivers this morning, she had given me her extension number but the automated phone answering system was not set up to accept it, so I had to be switched over by the human being the machine-algorithm system assigned.  Using an extension number is an OLD device.  For a telephone company to not install it does not inspire confidence.  It makes me wonder whether some of the lines are still barbed wire running along fences.

But my grandfather would love it.  So many break points, so many chances for mischief.

PASSWORD, DAMMIT.

Picture a little old lady pounding out a daily blog in her back bedroom while trying to keep her cats off the keyboard.  Two open cases with her Internet provider, which is the local telephone cooperative, operating an aging telephone system.  Connection is with DSL, which is not ideal.  It is valuable because it connects 911 quickly (I have needed that service) and because it works when the electricity is off.  (The electricity is owned by a North Dakota corporation and is often “down” — sometimes literally poles and lines on the ground — because of high winds, extreme temps, and long distances that are hard to maintain.)  The phone is in a different room than the computer, which techies don’t grasp.  They only know their own familiar lives.

So I’m 78 and not “up” on current slang let along tech jargon.  I listen slowly because I have to think what is meant.  But when they become condescending and begin to explain basics with boilerplate, it’s worse.  The techies seem to be under thirty, talk really fast, don’t like to move their lips, and are from other parts of the country.  I’m learning to use email contacts with techies instead of the phone, unless it’s an immediate problem.  (It could be worse — I could be a techie trying to explain the new world to a little old lady.)

I have two on-going and evidently insoluble problems.  One is blocklist, sometimes called blacklist, which might just be a mispronunciation or might be something more ominous than “blocking.”  There are more than 800 companies that maintain blocklists, which means that people can’t call in and you can’t call out.  One doesn’t know about that status unless one uses a formal service, which providers are slow to tell you exists.  Providers want you to think that you are safe because of something they are doing directly, not that they are contracting to another business, far away.  I just now learned about whitelists, but can’t use them because I have no password, and unless I have a previous password, I can’t have a new one.

The other issue is related but not the same, and that’s the war over passwords with Google, which insinuated itself into my local internet provider so that I have to use my GooglePlus password to get onto my regular email.  (My local provider doesn’t believe this.  They say it is impossible.)  I want to cancel my account with Google but am afraid it will also cancel my 3rivers account or at least require a different 3rivers password.  So I call my local provider to find out what my password is after I’ve cancelled Gmail.  They won’t tell me.  It’s a secret because of security.  I guess they’re afraid I might send myself SPAM.  So I take a risk and cancel GooglePlus.  I haven’t had an email since, but that’s not unusual on the morning after a holiday while people are clearing their inboxes.

I’m considering asking Putin what my password might be.  Trump claims Putin will know.  (That’s a joke.  I’m finding that people can’t tell jokes from what passes for reality.  But that’s a different problem.)  

Inventing new and more complex passwords for every transaction becomes a time-consuming and imagination-challenging project.  I’ve used all my pets, teachers, favorite books, playmates, and even Blackfeet words, though that’s tricky because it’s an oral language and no one spells them the same way.  (In Canada the word for the tribe — Siksika — is translated as Blackfoot.  Up there Piegan becomes Peigan.)  I designed a form for noting passwords that I keep in a binder alongside the computer and try to keep updated.  It’s 25 websites per page and there are six pages.  I don’t do games, databases, or any other fancy stuff, but I do stream movies all evening.

I’m a writer, so I use the Internet for research, to send queries and to share writing.  My primary venue is blogger.  I do not understand the relationship between blogger and google, so I use tumblr for backup.  I once had an adventure with the spoken word for posts and might renew that.  But basically I just spend the first half of every day composing a thousand word essay to post.  Every day the same thing the same way on the same schedule regardless of holidays.

But techies want bells and whistles, and the front office wants new and exciting features that will appeal to the advertising demographic which is certainly NOT little old ladies who are easily confused when the entire starter page is reconfigured to accommodate new features, like the demand that one make one’s blog post “pretty” and appealing.  I barely figure out how to change the photo in my heading, and they invent some new thing.  Then, when I’ve become dependent on their automatic re-sizing of image feature, they drop it.  (Which is separate from the issue of which images you can use and how to certify they are legal.)

All these services appear to be short on techies and using lesser skilled people all the time, because the ones that really KNOW have moved to San Francisco and are living in someone’s closet while waiting to catch a unicorn.  (This is not a joke.  It is a figure of speech using techie jargon.)  They cannot conceive of an internet user who is not on a cell phone that will convey “texting” and who is not using a handheld device.  They also have no mental image of thin infrastructure support out on the prairies and in the mountains.  Only cities on the coasts count.  (The Lake Michigan coast counts which is lucky for Chicago.)  In tolerable weather people in Valier are often standing on their porches in order to get decent cell service, even though there’s a tower right next to the grain elevator.

But at the same time the sheer numbers of users go up and the variety of kinds and levels of sophistication go up.  The only people who really understand all this are adolescent hackers.

But my Luddite orientation is sometimes lucky.  A few years ago I began to understand how fragile the supposedly invulnerable Internet really is, partly because the original design of World Wide Web has been co-opted by major providers trying to monetize everything by gating (the stinking passwords).  Therefore, since last summer I’ve been spending hours a day downloading and converting to print on paper everything I valued.  Since I sometimes write with another person and consider some of that material invaluable — precious — it was years of chapters and discussion.  As we age, I’ll try to find a reliable archive for the materials in case I die or the house burns down, but I can only hope they won’t re-digitize everything.  The academic world is now as turbulent as all the rest of the planet.  WHAT Ivory Tower?