About three weeks ago, I finished reading Enshitification (which, by the way, is required reading…) and had the oddest feeling that I needed to clean up my “data” out there in the world. I have a few social media sites. I had credit cards stored at a few places. And I had an ancient Amazon login that had my current bank card because I bought a birthday present for my nephew a few years ago and forgot to remove the card.
It was this last thing that I started thinking about over and over. I don’t know why. Enshitification does come down hard on Amazon, but no harder than, say, Apple or Google in terms of data theft. But it was that Amazon account that started niggling. I kept reminding myself to go in and remove that bank card, maybe delete the entire login since I have no intention of using it again. (I have since found numerous places that sell things my nephew likes within the city he lives. I buy gift cards…) But I never remembered to go do that when I was home and able to tie up that loose thread.
Well, guess what happened… Yep, bank card compromised. And it looks very much like they got it from Amazon. It was a classic bin attack, where they have some potential card numbers and just send small or zero charges to each to see of any of them work. If they get one that goes through, they then empty your account.
Most banks are aware of this tactic. (I can’t tell you how many bin attacks I had to deal with as a bank teller… That was a regular Monday task, calling all the customers whose cards had been shut down over the weekend to see what else they needed from us.) So my credit union saw the zero charges (two of them from “Amazon Prime”) and the security system sent me an alert. Within a minute of the charges, the card was closed, so no money was lost…
However, then I had to get a new card. I had to trace everything tied to the old one and replace it. And I had to delete the old one from every place it was still stored online. (It was closed, but that dead number has enough data attached to it that scammers can use it to get to new numbers on my account and others at my credit union…) This took me most of a Saturday and then several more hours later in the week when I got the new card number. All in all, it was about a solid thirty-six hours of my life thrown away on bank card fraud. (If only they could do something constructive…)
And all this might have been avoided if I’d just paid attention to that little nagging voice that kept saying to clean up that Amazon login. I now respect the intuition…
I’ve also deleted quite a lot of other stuff and scrambled data on social media, as well as locking Facebook to pretty much just myself… making it not so very social anymore.
This latter came about because I had a birthday recently.
Back in the lesser dark ages before enshitification, I had a Facebook account for myself as a bookstore owner. I recently discovered that this account still exists and started managing it a bit. A very little bit… I am not good at social media posting… But back in those more trusting days of social media, one commonly entered one’s birthdate on one’s page. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea even then, but I did it anyway. And it was sort of fun to get birthday greetings from dozens of people you only barely know.
But I was over on that account after my birthday this year, looking at the birthday wishes and found no less than twenty that were obvious scams, some from what looked to be compromised accounts of people I knew, but some were from flat-out strangers. This was deeply alarming.
What was even more alarming was that I discovered that once you put that birthdate in, you can’t remove it. (It might be necessary to create an account. That would explain why I entered it in the first place.) But in these latter days of enshitification, I sure don’t want Facebook in possession of the one bit of personal data that serves as a passkey to everything from medical records to credit scores. So, after a bit of loud imprecation against data piracy, I hit upon a solution. I figure if they’re not going to respect my privacy, then I’m under no obligation to tell them the truth.
I now have two different and rather unrealistic birthdates on Facebook. And nobody can see these birthdays except me. Though that doesn’t mean that Facebook isn’t sharing that data with whomever…
I know that reading Cory Doctorow‘s book — and working in a bank — sensitized me to data theft and fraud. But it still is rather eerie that, out of all the disastrous possibilities, I began thinking about this one little errant Amazon thread, and by golly that was the one that frayed. Within a couple weeks! And then after dealing with that, I started thinking I needed to clean up social media as well — and immediately received birthday greetings from the equivalent of twenty Nigerian princes down on their luck… So, all I gotta say is, if you’re feeling like you need to protect yourself from something, do it. Now!
Or maybe just take my story as remote intuition or synchronicity or something, and go be preemptive. Certainly, don’t store credit card information online. There is no web ordering site that is completely safe from scammers anymore. And remember that you’re under no obligation to tell the truth when social media sites require you to share dangerously sensitive data like your birthdate or address. (This latter I have never supplied… nor my phone number… and I use free g-mail accounts specific to any site that requires an email address, accounts that can be forwarded to my true address, if I want, but that can be quickly and easily deleted if — or when — hacked…)
And if you have an Amazon account… just delete it on principle… after you read Enshitification you will never shop there again…
Another eerie synchronicity… I make my Wednesday Word lists usually a month or two in advance, always based on themes from the calendar. Not at all relevant to current events… However, recently, some have taken on new significance in unsettling ways…
Of course, you can read meaning and entanglement into anything, but still… I will not be putting words like conflagration or bioweaponry on those lists, just in case…
This week’s word was originally chosen to go with Candlemas and the tiny flame of early spring enkindling in the darkness.
I did not know that our country would be going up in flames right about now… I mean, I guess I’ve known that was coming, else I wouldn’t be so involved with preparing for its implosion. And with the orange idiot in charge, anything is possible, from armed invasions of guys in ski masks to blowing up the Constitution to invading Greenland… Or maybe that’s off the table now… because Europe said no… But anyway, I sure couldn’t have predicted it all happening at once here in the first few weeks of 2026.
Except I chose those words…
So, subconsciously?…
I think I’m going to go through March and April to make sure I’m not making any more dire predictions…
The Wednesday Word
for 4 February 2026
flame
What does flame mean to you? Think about it. If you’d like, send me a quick poem or story… or just a few thoughts. If you really have something to say, maybe enter my Wednesday Word contest on AllPoetry.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 