Hacked: The Resolution

This is a follow-on from my last post, so start there if you haven't read it. I'm going to start out with a huge shout out to Amazon here: they've handled this entire incident with pure professionalism, unlike some other companies I could name, but won't because I don't even own a PlayStation.

As of today I have a new Amazon account, using my original email address. This was very easy to set up. My wish lists and gift card balance are going to be moved over to the new account. My Kindle books won't - Amazon doesn't have that capability - but I've been offered a gift card to cover the cost of the books and repurchase them. So I'll be buying Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey twice, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas yet again. The rest, we'll see - UR was a fine story, but I'm not sure I'll ever want to read it again.

I've also been offered a credit for the MP3s on my Amazon Cloud drive. Happily, I'd already copied those songs to my computer, so I don't really have any reason to buy them again. Unhappily, I only had 99 cents of MP3s in the first place.

My Amazon Prime account won't transfer, but I did get refunded for the time I didn't use, and I intend to sign up for it again. It really is ridiculously awesome to get free two-day shipping on the amount of stuff Amazon has available.

The only problem I've had with Amazon is dealing with my Kindle. I had to deregister and reregister the device with my new account, which should have deleted all of the old books I'd bought through Amazon automatically - not an ideal result, but expected. What actually happened is that all of the old books were not erased, but ended up in a weird "hidden" state on my Kindle. This included books I hadn't bought through Amazon, but loaded manually onto the Kindle. And, for some reason, a few books I did buy through Amazon (i.e. Fear and Loathing) stayed readable.

Because I'm relatively honest (and because I'm getting a gift card to cover the repurchase) I wiped all the old files from my Kindle, as Amazon intended. Still, if I'm going to have to deal with drive-wiping DRM, I'd like it to at least do the job thoroughly and correctly. I'd especially like it if all the eBooks that aren't under DRM stayed put. Luckily I kept backups of those, so no harm done.

So is all forgiven? Heck no. I'm still changing passwords everywhere I go. I had to close two credit cards that might have been compromised, and my third card keeps getting locked out by my bank's fraud prevention measures because I've hardly used it before. My purchase history with Amazon is gone, and I actually did listen to their recommendations sometimes, so I'm going to need to rebuild that by hand. And the jerk who did this will, in all likelihood, get away scott free - I've only held back from throwing his email address to the spambots because I know he'll probably never check it again.

But "David Ford", wherever you are, whoever you really are, know this: You're no hacker. You're not Kevin Mitnick, you're not Adrian Lamo. You're a cracker, Ford, just a thief with a PC. And when you inevitably fuck up and get busted, no matter how far away you are, I'll know. And I'll laugh like a Goddamn madman.