Email Bomb. What is it and Why?

A few weeks ago I was alerted by PayPal and Amex that a $1000+ charge from Ebay was made to my PayPal account.  Someone was able to use my PayPal account for a MacBook order with overnight USPS delivery.  These alerts stopped all transactions, but not the headache.

Within minutes I noticed that my linked email account had unusual activity.  I received welcoming messages from bulletin boards and companies, and instructions to confirm my online registration.

First a few dozen, then hundreds, then thousands !

The email avalanche continued through the evening, with many filling my Inbox and many more in the Spam box of my Gmail account.  Worried about missing real emails, I deleted the first hundred or so by hand, but then had to use mass delete to keep up with the 15,000+ messages in a few hours.  The Spam folder also had 10,000+, but they needed no action.  Blissfully, Gmail offers unsubscribe as part of Inbox spam identifier, which I used.

This is called an Email Bomb.

While tracking the email avalanche I turned to the Internet for insight.  I surmised that the emails were used as a distraction, which the Internet search confirmed.  The culprit hopes that a spending alert gets lost in thousands of other emails, so that the order goes through undetected.  Luckily, not in this case, as I use text messaging to confirm large credit card orders.  I even know the source of my headache, as the USPS order included delivery details.  The culprit lives in Indianapolis.

I assume that the email bomb is created with a registration bot on websites that do not use captchas and such.  The result is a huge nuisance and I must have lost a few regular emails, but the email avalanche stopped within two days.  Since then, I got the occasional "you have not confirmed" reminders, but as a trickle.  I assume that my email is still registered on many sites that did not ask confirmation, and hopefully nothing too embarrassing or disturbing.  This story is also a mea culpa.

I reset my passwords and was told to replace my credit card (though that account was not breached, nor were funds removed from PayPal).
Take-home messages:

1. Set confirmation text messages for (large) orders.
2. Use 2-step verification on financial and other sensitive accounts.
3. Keep Inbox mostly empty.

The 2019 Ridgecrest CA Earthquake Pair

Two large earthquakes rocked California in July 2019.  On July 4th a large M6.4 moved a NE-SW trending fault that parallels the Garlock left-lateral fault system and a major (10x larger) M7.1 occurred on July 6 (June 5 local time) along the NW-SE East California Shear Zone that parallels the right-lateral plate boundary to the East.

Displacement from the larger quake are on the order of meters over a fault length of several tens of kilometers.  Offsets are captured by updated images on Google Earth.

The distance from populated areas limited their impact, but local shaking was severe and damaging.  The earthquake magnitudes are equivalent in energy to ~4 (M6.4) and ~45 (M7.1) Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.  There are typically ~15 M7+ earthquakes around the world and it was two decades ago when one occurred in California.  Large M7 aftershock earthquakes are not likely in the area, but many smaller will continue along the two fault trends, with more M5+ certainly possible.

The use of technical terms mainshock and aftershock is confusing semantics.  The largest earthquake in a cluster is called the mainshock and earthquakes recently (hours/days) before are called foreshocks.  Earthquakes days (and weeks) after the main shock are called aftershocks.  Here, some aftershocks are related to the M6.4 on the NE-SW fault system, and others to the M7.1 on the NW-SE system.  The shocks were recorded by Ann Arbor RaspiShakes, illustrated by the M7.1 event.

Westerly movement from the M6.4 may have primed the M7.1 by releasing sliding resistance on the latter's fault system,  Both are ultimately the result of regional strain from plate movement with a relative displacement of the Pacific plate of ~5cm/year, which accumulates stresses that are released periodically.

The area has historic seismic activity, with the larger reflecting continuing northwesterly motion of the Pacific plate along the N American plate margin (represented by the San Andreas Fault trace to the west). Over the past 40 years, 8 other M5+ earthquakes have occurred within 50 km of the July 6th, 2019 earthquake. The largest was a M 5.8 event on September 20, 1995, just 3 km west. The M7.1 Hector Mine event of Oct 16, 1999 occurred ~150km to the SE, and was similar lateral slip fault movement as the Ridgecrest M7.1.

Do these earthquakes change the potential for the Big One? No, because continuing Pacific-North America relative plate movement in western California means that a large quake along the San Andreas Fault system must occur in the near future. These recent California earthquakes to the east do nothing to reduce that threat.

#ExxonKnew - #WeKnew

From Twitter

In 1982, #Exxon predicted 400-420ppm #CO2 and ~1.1C warming (since 1960) for today in proprietary report.  They were right, but did not share.  Also, predicting ~3C increase for 21st Century. 

Paper at:
https://insideclimatenews.org/system/files_force/documents/1982%20Exxon%20Primer%20on%20CO2%20Greenhouse%20Effect.pdf

12:20pm · 14 May 2019 

Read the report!  It assesses the (published) climate science of the day and inserts consumption predictions, all of which was public knowledge.  No conspiracy here; society decided to ignore that knowledge.

11:54am · 15 May 2019

Those upset by #ExxonKnew, here is prior year spot-on Hansen etal analysis using basic energy balance calculation and similar fast growth projection. New hashtag #WeKnew.
Paper at:

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_ha04600x.pdf

7:52am · 16 May 2019

Coda  

Read the 2018 NYT Magazine article "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change", By Nathaniel Rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

Road to a Resilient Global Society

Daily news reports bring harrowing testimonials by communities, aid organizations and local officials of rapid environmental changes that are underway.  Yet, our society’s response to these changes is slow, and, in many cases, remains non-existent.  This inaction may reflect the perception that change is inherently slow and gradual, such as climate warming over several decades. 

The meaning of long-term change is embodied in the concept of sustainability, defined as a world where human needs are met equitably without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.  However, changes are impacting human society more quickly in many areas, affecting wealthy nations and poor nations alike.  This is captured by the complementary concept of resilience, which examines the ability of human society to prepare for, to absorb, to recover from, and to adapt to adverse events.  Societal resilience forms the foundation of a connected set of scientific perspectives by Susan Anenberg, Andrea Dutton, Christine Goulet, and Daniel Swain that explore the changing domains of air quality, sea level rise, earthquakes, and extreme weather in a long-form commentary in the science journal Earth's Future (https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001242).

Society’s progress along the four corners of prepare, adsorb, respond and adapt resilience square is uneven, in spite of our understanding of the foundational science and a growing sense that urgent action is needed.  The resilience vignettes describe the meaning and impact of current and near-term change in four major domains: human health impacts from air pollution, coastal inundation from sea-level rise, damaging earthquakes in populated areas, and impacts from extreme precipitation. 

Given our understanding of the scientific principles, societal action, from preparation to adaption, will be critical in minimizing the negative impacts of today’s changes.  The unprecedented rates of change in today's Earth system argue for urgent action in support of a resilient global society.

Toward a Resilient Global Society: Air, Sea Level, Earthquakes, and Weather, by Susan C. Anenberg, Andrea Dutton, Christine Goulet, Daniel L. Swain, Ben van der Pluijm.
Earth's Future, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001242