Warning: Shit can happen, but it should not repeat
Hi all You readers of my posts here in my blog. Time today to share some more experiences with You. Did You already realise that we`re almost 2 weeks in front of the first anniversary of my blog? Wow. Uncredible how fast time is running.
Since my last post a lot of important things have happened here. Together with my colleagues Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations, and Luis Traúzola, VP Admin/Finance, I have decided to abandon our offices and instead of these we construct now a new, modern open meeting & working space area, which will be much more appropriate for our future "hybrid" work mode @ our factory in Itatiba. And this "constructive desctruction" (Schumpeter) has already started! If everything goes as scheduled, we should be able to inaugurate our new office area until the end of July. And we`re all terribly curious and impatient now.
Two weeks ago I have received my first Astra Zeneca vaccination dosis. On the following 2 days I was completely knocked down. All my bones and muscles hurt and I was terribly sleepy. But since then I am fine again and I am waiting now for the receival of the second dosis, which is scheduled for August 5.
Firmly trusting, that this will really come true, I have already started to plan my first international travels for from September on. Looks like I`ll participate in business development activities as well as in several visits to customers and sales & distribution partners in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Senegal then. And I am also already planning my first trip to Germany, where I have been invited as speaker for an important industry event, for October.
The particular experience, which I would like to share with You today, has to do with a cause of fraud in which I stupidly fell during the last week.
I had just finished my participation in an endless and bothersome international online conference, was on the jump into our kitchen for having a quick lunch and waiting for my neighbor to look me up, because I wanted to discuss a problem with him related to one of the trees in his garden. You see - the normal crazy and often quite stressful home office & live routine.
As if they had known exactly, how occupied I was right at that moment, a scammer called me on my mobile fone and intricated me in a conversation with him. With all the other subjects in my head, I ran into his trap and enabled him resp. his companions, to clone my whatsapp. Actually I did not even realise this, until about 10 minutes later a former employee and good friend of mine, who lives in Sao Paulo, called me and made me re-confirm, that it was not me, who had sent a message to him, asking him to help "me" out with a money transfer.
But from this moment on it came fully clear to me, what shit had happened. I called Alex Musolino, our IT Coordinator, and asked him to check out with whatsapp, how I could revert this fraud. And I started sending Teams messages and emails to all my hundreds of contacts allover the world in order to alert them and to unarm the thiefes.
This took me about 2 hours. Alex in between gave me the feedback, that whatsapp did not really offer effective support for me. What I learned from Alex was, that as I did not have activated the "2 stage validation" procedere in the safety adjustments of my whatsapp, the thiefes - who obviously are very familiar with all these technical features - had immediately done it after their gain of access to my account.
Thus the only option, which whatsapp offered me to reestablish self-control over my account, was to wait uncredible 7 days (and nights) until the "2-stage validation" security mechanism let me enter my account again for the first time, so that I could redefine the access settings and kick the damned thiefs out again.
I am quite sure that You can understand my enormous frustration and rage about the thiefs, whatsapp and myself. I felt like the biggest idiot an earth, but I was not ashamed.
First of all people like me, who are constantly active and who have always thousands of information and thoughts in their mind, cannot avoid that they commit failures. I believe we altogether must recognize that it is quite normal for human beeings to err from time to time. We`re not machines. Thank God !
Thus shit can happen. But the only really important desire for me is, that the same shit should never happen twice in my life. At least I try to learn my lessons and to avoid committing the same errors again. More or less it works, but there have unfortunately also been exceptions.
Finally - after exactly 7 days from the fraud attack on - I gained control over my whatsapp account back and - for sure - I immediately activated the "2 stage validation" security procedere. Hopefully my whatsapp is safe(er) now.
This very important intensive lesson - that`s how I finally take it - has cost me lots of hours of writing messages and emails and doing calls to contacts and additionally in total 12.500 Brazilian Reais (approx. 2500 USD). Unfortunately some of my very close friends had also fallen into the traps of the thiefs and wired small amounts to them "for helping me out during emergency situations", before my alerts reached them.
For sure I repayed these amounts to my friends immediately, because there could not be the least doubt, that I had personally layd the paths for the thiefs to them and was thus responsible for the losses.
But I made some additional learnings through this "lesson". First of all, Covid-19 and our new work and life routines have pushed us firmly and quickly into lots of digitised processes and systems, which we need to use around the clock for getting our things done.
My strong feeling is, that we altogether have developped a much to high confidence in all these processes and systems and should turn much more sceptical and critical with these again. In the end lots of companies, service providers and administrative authorities have unexpressedly transfered lots of their former responsabilities and jobs to ourselfes.
Thinking a little more in debth about it, I come to the conclusion, that I am - at least partially - working for my bank, for my telephone, TV, internet, streaming music, newspaper subscriptions and many other service providers - besides paying good money to them for receival of their services.
The second lessons was, that I am all but alone as an idiot. Almost all my worldwide contacts did also not have known yet about the option, to increase massively the security of whatsapp by activating the "2 stage validation" security procedere. Only a few of them had already known this and activated it on their mobile fones until I questioned them about it.
And as a third learning I came to the conclusion, that we may intellectually perfectly understand certain risks and take firm decisions, not to run into them. But - depending on our momentary activity and emotional situation - we cannot really rely on our conditions, to practice this strictly. Shit really can happen for everybody and everywhere, but at least everybody should take it as a lesson learned and make thus sure, that it does not repeat. And share this lesson with his friends and contacts !!!!
Enough sharing of experiences and learnings for today. Was this interesting for You? Maybe even helpful? If yes, I have already fully achieved my today`s main objective.
Anyhow I will now enjoy the rest of this beautiful (lazy) sunday afternoon and hope that You are able to do the same.
After so much modern technology related stuff it`s now definitely time for sharing this wonderful(ly) old video version of the "Sunny Afternoon" song of The Kinks with You. Enjoy it:
Have a great start in the new week. See You soon back here again..... Let`s then altogether celebrate the 1st Anniversary of my blog !!!!!!!
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