Thursday, May 3, 2012

Insecurity Code

While the medical community..scientists, doctors, nurses have worked tirelessly to help us live longer, fuller lives, the internet community, technicians, innovators are working just as hard, nonstop, to find new ways of doing us in. Why else would they have developed the security code--a demonic means of keeping seniors from seeking help on the web under the pretense of preventing internet “abusers” from signing on to certain sites .


When I couldn’t access my e-mail today, an error message appeared recommending I take certain actions--press “Refresh”; if that didn’t work, press “Security”, and if those two failed, press “Yahoo.”

Once on Yahoo, I filled in my e-mail address--the ID was already filled in—and then came to the Security code. In front of me were eight or nine drunken letters I was supposed to identify and write in the box below. Unlike other codes I’ve encountered these letters didn’t seem to have had as much to drink, so I was confident and wrote them as I saw them..a small m, 2 capital AA’s, a 6, small p, small f, a zero,o and a capitol F. Sorry, the letters you have entered are incorrect—Please try again.

A new group of letters were already waiting for me in the box. This time I made them all lower case even though the capital H didn’t look the same as the sample. Qt5khcvrz. Sorry, the letters you have entered are incorrect—Please try again.

My third try failed as dismally as the other two, so not finding any number to call or e-mail to write, I turned to the audio, and heard what sounded like a faint shuffling of something against a backdrop of static. Not only couldn’t I identify anything, a letter or a word or whatever they thought they were saying, but now I had wasted forty five minutes trying to get help from an entity equally determined not to give it to me.

Feeling old and defeated—a complete internet failure, I gave up and tried my e-mail again. It worked.