Paranoid persecution complex Archived Message Posted by scrabbles on December 24, 2018, 5:53 pm Yesterday my Macbook crashed. I was updating the Mojave operating system which was supposed to take 54 minutes. I went away for half an hour to put lard on the cat's boil and when I returned it still said "53 minutes remaining" so obviously something was wrong. I shut it down and tried to re-open it. No chance. It just went round in a never-ending loop asking for my password, which when I put it in asked for it again ..... and again ..... etc. I called Apple who immediately put me through to an administrator, a woman, who when I explained the circumstances took me through umpteen procedures, none of which worked. After about an hour and a half on the phone she said she was handing me over to her superior because she'd run out of options. This chap came on, who judging from his name and accent was asian. Again we went through a long complicated procedure in which I had to enter a string of code words and numbers. Nothing worked. After 2 and a half hours continually on the phone he said the only option was to re-install my operating system from scratch -- only this might lose information and he wanted an assurance that I had backed up vital files. He then said he was sending me his work schedule via email (fortunately I also operate a Windows machine) and that I was to either email him or call him direct on his personal line if the re-install didn't work. He then ended the call. I waited another 20 minutes or so for the Mac to download and when I reopened it everything was back to normal. It opened OK, my files were all intact, my email was working. Bear in mind that Apple had allowed two skilled operatives to spend over 2 hours on the phone to solve a technical fault on a MacBook that was years out of warranty. I asked both of them what had caused the problem and neither one could give me an answer. In the middle of the night I woke with the suspicion lodged in my mind that this was the perfect way to keep tabs on someone's emails and internet activity. I regularly go to the sites most of us here frequent -- Media Lens, the LBN of course, truthdig, Information Clearing House, OffGuardian, so on and so on. I don't do Facebook and I don't do twitter. I lay awake thinking of all the complex procedures they had talked me through, repeating some of them 3 and 4 times, and then finally it had been solved by something very simple and relatively quick. Oh, and another aspect that aroused my suspicion. The asian chap asked if my network connection was operating properly. With his help I checked it (I'm with talktalk) and he waited at least 10 minutes while I found my router password and went through the routine. It struck me that most large companies, on finding that another technical problem might be at fault other than theirs would ask you to first get that sorted and then go back to them. Anyway, in my paranoid state in the middle of the night, it just struck me as very odd the lengths he'd gone to. If my paranoia has any basis in reality, then he's tracking this message right now and passing it on to whoever might be interested. I don't actually believe this to be the case, but there are certain aspects of this experience that are decidedly strange and have set me wondering. Happy Paranoid Christmas to you All. (A final curious if irrelevant detail: the woman pronounced Mojave sounding the "j" instead of "h". Why would an Apple employee not know the correct pronunciation?) Message Thread: Paranoid persecution complex - scrabbles December 24, 2018, 5:53 pm Before the internet - Shyaku December 27, 2018, 8:13 am   Searching