Yes I'm still alive

I've been absent from blogging the last two weeks. I have a couple of posts started, but none of them quite came together. On top of that I've been dealing with a minor case of identity theft. I say minor because it only cost me time and aggravation.

A few days ago I was flooded with emails thanking me for registering at various commercial sites I hadn't visited. As I started working through the two dozen messages I discovered that I wasn't the real target. The thief had used someone else's name, address, phone and credit card number, but my personal email address. I was able to track down the victim by accessing the registration information on one of the sites. When I spoke to R, she informed me that she'd recently switched from a PO box to a new address. The address on the registration was her old PO box and clearly someone had intercepted enough of her mail to open these accounts and purchase a lot of stuff.

That settled, I wanted to contact the companies and get my email removed from their lists. It really shocked me how hard this was to do. Blockbuster was the easiest. They had an obvious link on their main page with an online form that allowed me to address the process. Other companies required me to call them during normal business hours. A couple of the sites had login screens on the front page of their web sites, so lacking the needed information I was unable to reach their support links. But the most annoying was Columbia House. When I reached a customer service representative, they were unable to do anything unless I game them my registration number. But I explained, I didn't receive the registration email and the bill didn't have a registration number on it. So then I asked if they could just search for the membership by the email address. Apparently not. After all this, they sent the DVDs anyway.