2.267 getting todo’s done

Wednesday 09/01/2021

Went for the standard walk. Then sat down to kill some to-do items that have been bugging me.

Emailed Lennie to check progress on the online event planning form.

Inspired by Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast, I went into my T-Mobile account and changed both the password and the PIN. I already made sure my credit scores were frozen, I think I mentioned that a few days ago; but I hadn’t known about the PIN and its importance before. Most of the cell providers have you define a PIN as the primary security for customer service actions. Yes, you have a password to log into your account to do billing stuff and buy more service or whatever. But if you call customer service, there’s no password, just the PIN.

A bad actor who knows your name, address, phone number and PIN — all of which were compromised for 10 million T-mobile customers in the recent security breach — can call T-mobile customer service and have your number directed to a new phone. Service will ask for the name, address, phone # and the PIN. Then he reads them the ID numbers from the SIM card in his phone, and boom, his phone is now attached to your number, and your phone is dead.

Think that’s bad? Well think what he can do with that phone? Every online account you own, has that number as its 2nd factor authentication. Dear Google, I forgot my password. They send an SMS text with a code to “my” phone which is now his. Now he can change the password on your Gmail and can read all your mail. And so on.

Anyway, I did a couple other things that were pending in the form of emails in my inbox. After lunch, at 2:30, I went down to the auditorium where I had called for a meeting of the AV team to try to work out how to do a live event with a zoom extension for people who couldn’t come, e.g. people in skilled nursing or whatever. Yeah, we have people in AL and SN who can zoom into meetings.

This was a frustrating exercise. All we had to do was to get a video image of our stage, onto a window on a laptop. Four high-powered techies and we didn’t manage it. I had wanted to get to where we could actually take a laptop out of the auditorium and check the audio levels. Nope. We barely got a picture from iPhone onto a laptop. I won’t go into details but it was a fiasco.

At 4:30 there was a meeting in the penthouse where the Heritage Circle announced its grants for this year. The Heritage Circle is a fund based on contributions from residents, that makes grants for projects that will enhance life at CH. This year they are funding outside bike lockers for resident use, and the cost of buses for excursions like to museums. (CH has a small bus of its own but it is neither big nor comfortable for things like a trip to the city.)