The Internet Jungle

Lets face the facts. The Internet is a tool for efficiency and convenience on one hand while being the single greatest threat to the family unit, financial well-being and personal privacy in our time.

For purposes of this narrative, "You/Your" refers to you, your spouse, your children and/or significant others.

Your account numbers, passwords, money tranfers, spending habits, social communications, photos,  videos, opinions, voting preferences, internet surfing and travel habits, contacts and phone numbers, current and past latitude/longitude are all stored somewhere in cyberspace. Your real-time location is also logged.

Recognize there are no non-disclosure agreements and no realistic penalty to those who steal this information, sell it, and/or and use it in illegal enterprises that blatantly violate the Constitutional Rights of all US Citizens.

Lets not deceive ourselves or be deceived by propaganda.

There is no personal privacy.

Social networks and commercial companies are constantly communicating phony and laughable Privacy Policies that continuously skate toward non-privacy.

Every update of an Iphone or tablet includes near-forced upgrades (harassment by pop-up windows) that induce one use Apple Wallet or other service that can be used to link and control your finances and your ability to move and manage your money.

The author has had almost every credit card and bank account compromised in the past five years. Most of the notices of these compromises arrive no earlier than 3 to 6 months after the event, sometimes not communicated up to 2 years after the incident.

The author and many thousands of others had their SF-86 secret clearance application compromised to the Communist People's Republic of China by the targeted theft of a government laptop from the back seat of a personal automobile in DC. The amount of personal history on those documents was enormous (per every individual) and no-one went to jail.

All we received for personal privacy assurance was free credit monitoring for a limited period of time paid by the US Government, meaning you and me.

While blogs are generally truthful, they are also infiltrated with lies and spoofing.

On average, our business phone number is called 5-7 times per day by robo-calling devices which are illegal in Virginia.

Our cell provider seems to make no noticable effort to curb this abuse even though I know they have software to recoginize call patterns, intercept and cut off numbers of those who abuse customers.

A recent robo-call variation was an automated message indicating the this author was about to be arrested by IRS agents unless a phone number was called to provide a service for a fee by credit card to defer the author's arrest. How novel an approach.

Here is a creative method someone has decided to use to attempt to extort money -

They have nothing on us concerning the above (v1). The email is sent about once a week. It is classic "sextortion".

A new version of the first sextortion letter (v2) appeared recently. See the above.

Unlsolicited telemarketers call constantly. They often talk over us and make no effort to listen. They even call back in a few minutes not realizing we have already said no to their services.

Banks, such as Wells Fargo created fake bank accounts for thousands and charged fees for maintaining those accounts. It took a while but they did get fined for it. That was rare.

Internet marketers such as Amazon signed up thousands for the $100 Amazon Prime account without authorization. Amazon did get fined for it. That was rare.

Amazon's Alexa and similar devices are listening to you all the time and more than you think.

Your "smart phone" or computer camera and microphone can be activated at any time remotely by those who know how.

It is strongly suggested that you put a piece of tape over your computer camera and do not expose your cell phone while in the privy for obvious reasons.

Google controls what search results you see.

Facebook controls what interactions you see. Also be aware Facebook is full of security holes that are routinely exploited.

On 28-July-2019 Facebook was fined $5 billion dollars for data breaches, misuse of that data and failure to reveal those data breaches to customers. Did you see one penny of that settlement?

It is all about social/monetary manipulation and ignorant people will be manipulated.

So be careful when in the Internet Jungle. Everyone who knows how is watching, manipulating and attempting to control what you hear, see, think. vote and how you earn/spend your money.

Be wise and resist, all of it. Protect yourself at all times.

Countermeasures:

If a vendor forces your email address on a form as a condition to do business then you can supply them a temporary email address from: https://10minutemail.net/

If a vendor forces your telephone number on a form as a condition to do business then you can go to this site and choose a number to enter per your preferred amusement: https://moo.net/numbers.html

If you want to be a bit more sneaky then use this number:

909-390-0003. It is an echo-back number. It does not waste your time ringing, connects immediately, echos anything said and is actually useful for checking the fidelity of your audio connection.

You can place your number on the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Registry with limited results. It is claimed to make a difference but personally I have never witnessed that benefit.

The State of Virginia has excellent guidance on reaction to robo-call operations with the state sponsored Consumer Protection - Robo-calls page.

CEFS Policy:

We only publish the info@"".com email address and the CEFS business phone number to permit customers to make initial contact with us.

Both contact methods are robo-called and spammed constantly. We deal with it by consistently refusing to do business with any  kind of solicitors.

Because of robo-calls and automated spam we refrain from publishing the names of our Flight Instructors or their contact information on this website.

If you wish to use social media to share your name and contact that is certainly your choice.

Because of FAA Policy requirements for flight training we must have your accurate contact and critically identifiable personal information by law.

Once your critical information is received it is scanned and password protected. Print information required for inspection by the TSA during audits is kept in physically locked storage.

Please understand the TSA audits flight schools. We have been audited multiple times and we welcome their oversight and strive for 100% compliance because it is the law of these United States and is used to protect us (all) from military/terrorist attack.

Your contact and billing data is entered into Flight Schedule Pro and is not publicly visible except individually to you, CEFS Flight Instructors and the Owner of CEFS by layered permissions.

Our business model is to avoid data release of any kind unless required by law and only on the presentation of a warrant or subponea from a Judge. As a concern for your and our privacy, we consult our attorney before complicance.

Beware of reviews that are too bubbly or critical. People who write to blogs are not under oath and are not prosecutabe for expressing an opinion, good or bad, truthful or not. The same goes for news and political organizations.

Beware of all reviews. You are advised to check out businesses in person including ours. We can give you customer references if you request, and are content to do so.

Consider too that in this day of relatively inexpensive advanced video and sound techniques that any kind of sound, image, video or combination thereof can be fabricated and made to look very real, including you in a static image or active movie participant!

You might notice the CEFS website has no requirements for cookies or any displays of ignorant advertisements that are designed to place tracking cookies on your computer.

Use your best judgement when surfing, not someone else's.

It is the Internet Jungle we all live in.