Re: Re: Re: Hello!

What wouldn’t I give to bring back pigeon post?! Horror stories of sending emails ‘reply all’ aside, I do wonder about the actual expediency of the email as opposed to the written letter. True, it does make group get-togethers much easier to arrange, though I would more often than not rather be left out of the processes involved, the tangential conversations one’s unwillingly made party to, the confusion of fifteen people all replying at the same time saying different things, and the general mess of conversations spanning several weeks and five hundred utterly pointless and unproductive individual messages… And I know too well that Royal Mail cannot be trusted to climb a flight of stairs in order to deliver ‘signed for’ letters but will rather leave them in communal hallways open to the street. But in this day and age surely one must be wary of the easy option, and the internet is no exception, arguably just as open to the street, also requiring just the tools to pick a lock. Just a month or so ago I opened my private email to discover that I’d sent myself an message from another personal account inviting me to buy a dishwasher; I think my friends must have assumed that I had changed careers as no-one seemed to question my affiliation with electrical appliances…

 

It may seem naïve of me, but I just still don’t see the point of spam. I’ve even developed a remarkable sang-froid in the face of the 250 emails I get every day offering me Russian Brides, Rolexes, and Anti Anxiety Drugs (though these are increasingly a temptation I have to say - paranoia is the modern-day Black Death, I religiously carry my bird’s-beak-gas-mask around with me: yet another of those things that any self-respecting gal should carry in her bag, like eyeliner, or the complete A la recherche du temps perdu). I mean - is there really anyone who’s titillated by pictures of bikers in their trollies, or believes that Kofi Annan wants to be their new best friend?!

 

And so, dear readers, it is my unfortunate duty to report that, as so many before us, and so many still no doubt to come, we were hacked last weekend, and an email purporting to be from us (hard workers though we may be, I’m still not convinced that we’d ever be found in the office of a Sunday night…!) was sent out to our web-mailing list. I would like to assure you, one and all, that the problem has been speedily resolved, and that not only would we never ask for any personal or financial details from anyone - addresses, credit card details - but that we would also NEVER send out an email what was ingrammatically correct. So please - if you have received an email from us asking you in bad English for any information - do not fill anything in!

 

KA, The Diamond Standard

 

Despite my flippancy (no doubt some childhood-instilled need to camouflage my inner self) we have taken this incident very seriously. Let me reassure you all that we have now double-Yale- and Chubb-locked our security to ensure that this will not happen again. And please let me reiterate, that if you have received any email from us asking for anything other than book reviews or praise for our endeavours, charm, beauty and/or intelligence, it will not have been from us: NEVER provide your personal details either by email or via links.