The Shape of Days

I get a lot of e-mail. I guess it’s a virtue of having been a blogger for so long. I’m hardly well-known, but I guess I’ve had time to build up an audience. Some folks familiar with my blog like to send me e-mails. These are always greatly appreciated, even when they just don’t interest me or tickle my fancy.

However, every so often — I’d say maybe six times a year — I get e-mails that hover on that blurry line between amusing and frightening. These are usually written in broken English and are sometimes the self-evident product of disturbed souls. I got one a few months ago asking me to forward a rambling, disjointed, 4,000-word e-mail to CNN reporter Lou Dobbs. (I declined.) Back during the last weeks of this spring’s installment of the TV show “Survivor,” I got an e-mail from a young lady begging me to give her the telephone number of one of the contestants on the show. I considered giving her the number of my contact in the PR department of Survivor Entertainment Group for about ten seconds, but thought better of it.

A few minutes ago, an e-mail appeared in my in box. It was mostly gibberish, strings of random letters and numbers. At the center was this terse message:

please send me your public key.
futher messages will come encrypted.
thank you.

The phrase “public key,” for those of you who are blissfully unaware, refers to a particular type of encryption software. Various technologies exist whereby you can take any kind of computer data, like an e-mail message, and turn it into a long string of random numbers and letters. The recipient of said e-mail can then run another program which converts the gibberish back into legible text. It’s like a code.

There are only three kinds of people who use encryption software: Those who legitimately have data security needs, like defense contractors and such; those who have something to hide, like pornographers and terrorists and traffickers in stolen goods; and those who are suffering from delusions of grandeur. This third group is made up of people who really wish they were members of one of the first two groups, but aren’t.

You get one guess which category my new friend belonged in. I’ll give you a hint: He doesn’t have a clearance, and he isn’t looking to buy black-market uranium.

After I explained that I would not use encryption software and that any off-the-record exchanges could take place via the telephone number listed prominently on every page of this site, my new friend replied, “You think analog telephone lines are secure??!!??” Seriously, just like that, with the two question marks and then the two exclamation points and then two more question marks. It think it was supposed to indicate incredulity.

That’s the point where I should have just stopped. I really should have. But I didn’t, and what with one thing and another, my new friend finally explained just what he wanted to tell me. You’ve probably guessed it by now, haven’t you? That’s right: He wanted to provide me with a stolen copy of Mac OS X for Intel.

I explained to him in no uncertain terms that, first, I could have obtained it on Friday if I’d wanted it, and second, that I don’t want it. I went on to explain that I am neither a source for nor a consumer of stolen copies of Mac OS X for Intel, and that I would in fact do whatever I could to prevent people from either finding or distributing stolen copies of Mac OS X for Intel. To be honest, I was kinda mean to the poor kid. But in my own defense, I’ve received over three thousand e-mails in the past four days from people either offering me stolen copies of Mac OS X for Intel, asking for stolen copies of Mac OS X for Intel, or calling me a liar for making up hoaxes about stolen copies of Mac OS X for Intel. It’s enough to exhaust anybody’s patience.

Of course the punchline is that my new friend displayed such paranoia about a tapped phone line but had no qualms whatsoever about sending me digitally signed messages marked with the electronic version of the sender’s fingerprints in which he offered to provide me with stolen goods. Seems kinda ironic, doesn’t it?

• See? I’m hilarious
• Things not to do
• Memo to Ann Coulter