Luke’s Notebook

I don’t get it.

How could we live in the best country in the world, with the incredible number of luxuries and conveniences that the average person has, with the smartest brains, the latest in technology, and yet… we allow babies to be killed every day?

How is it?

How can we spend so much time and money protecting animals or trying to “go green,” but miss the elephant in the room?  How can we claim to be compassionate, a defender of the weak, when we don’t even protect unborn Americans?

It makes no sense to me.

We are so intelligent, so savvy, so advanced, but still thousands of babies are being killed every single day, and the United States allows this.

What really makes your stomach turn is to realize that, when you get down to it, we have a provision in place that lets us kill for convenience.  When we decide we don’t want this child, we have the ability to end its life right then and there.  Problem solved.  Sure, nobody is maliciously wanting to kill babies just for the sake of it.  It might just be a matter of economics.  Maybe you feel you can’t afford to support a baby, or you don’t think you have the time.

But how ridiculous would it be to take this thinking elsewhere?  Can you terminate somebody else if you had good reason?  If you’re struggling to make ends meet, is it okay to get rid of one of your children just to lighten the load?  And to realize that most of these abortions are done for pure convenience — it’s just sickening.

To be honest, it’s a little hard for me to really believe that this is going on in the United States.  In this country that has taken such a stance for freedom and the protection of life, standing up for the litle guy, how could it even be fathomable that we would have abortions taking place every day?

We have such a beautiful country, such a great country, that it’s hard to even imagine this is happening.  It doesn’t seem possible.  How did it happen that we become champions for animals and plants, but not for unborn humans?

It’s scary that we have made the determination that life at that level is expendable.  If you don’t like the way your pregnancy is turning out, you can try again and hope for a better result.

It’s just so disturbing.  I love this country, but I have to wonder how great we really are when we actually allow — and have provisions for — abortions.  It kills me to say that, because I don’t want to diss America.  But how can we be a leader and a good example if we ourselves are missing the obvious?  Can we really be that great if we are killing off thousands of our future citizens every day — and are okay with it?

Well, I wanted to give a little background info on the blog.  Now that I’ve explained why I went forward with the move, I’d like to just reflect on the blog as a whole.

As I mentioned in a recent entry, this blog began in May of 2004.  We now have over 1,100 posts.  It’s amazing to me to think about that.  So much has happened since then!  So much has changed.

So what got me started in the first place?

A big motivation for me was the challenge I had to create my very own blogging system.  I had seen people who had LiveJournals, and I was thinking, “Hey, I could probably make that.”  So it was a project of mine, to take my limited knowledge of PHP, MySQL, and CSS in order to make a functioning blog.

It was a learning experience, and I had fun writing the code, troubleshooting it, and eventually having a functional blog.  Later on, I would add a few assorted features, such as RSS support, comments, and emoticons.

The blog has also changed quite a bit visually, although not as much as it has in the recent switch.  But I would change the background image or color scheme from time to time.  In addition to that, the blog’s official name has changed a few times, going from “Luke’s Blog,” to “Luke’s Journal,” to “Luke’s Notebook,” which is what we have been for the past couple years now.

The content of the entries is a bit different these days, as well.  A lot of what I wrote about back then centered more around what I did in a certain day or a week — basically what I was up to, what I was thinking about.  I also would give accounts of many softball games, relaying the final score, how I batted, and so on.  Later on, I would start to write about some more serious things, different things that were on my heart or that I was thinking about.

I’ve never really had any set formula or structure.  Because of that, I’ll write about ice cream in one entry, softball in another, and life as a big brother in yet another.  I never try to be random for the sake of it, but I do try to be real.  Entries can range from very lighthearted to dead serious.

One thing I’ve noticed with my more recent entries is the lack of emoticons/smilies.  I’m not sure why that is.  Back in the day, I would use them all the time to help get my point across.  Maybe I see it as a challenge these days to still accurately relay my “tone” in writing without using smilies.  I’m not exactly sure.  I suppose a lot of it has to do with the content of the post, too.  In the early days, the posts would be more loose or immature, so adding a or in there would be more appropriate.

I still find it hard to believe that I have well over one thousand entries.  What is really odd, I think, is that I have never considered myself to be a writer… and still don’t, to a degree.  I mean, I have always been good at English, and have had pretty good spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills.  But I was never a writer.  Dad is a writer.  Mark is a writer.  Not me, though!

Now that I think about it, 1,150+ entries later, I think a more accurate thing would be to say I’m not a creative writer or a great story-teller like they may be.  I’ve never been a big wordsmith, but I think my niche has been to just write what is on my mind, even in simple terms.

Sometimes, it feels like I’m saying the exact same thing two or three different ways in the same blog post.  I would wish I could come up with some more artful language like Dad or Mark might be able to, but I think this is simply my style.  I don’t really mind it; I just find it fascinating that, despite the running “But I’m not a writer!” objection I’ve had over the past five years, here I am.  Go figure!

I do enjoy it, obviously.  I just like to log things.  It’s fun to go back and see what was happening a year or two ago.  I can find out what was going on with the family, what was on my mind — stuff like that.

I was 19 when I started writing, and I’m now 24.  I have matured quite a bit in those five years, and the content of the posts clearly reflect that.  I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily more serious-minded now, because I still just love humor and am always finding things to laugh  about.  I think I have just wised up a lot over the years.

I guess I don’t have as many “silly” posts these days.  Back then, I was younger, had fewer responsibilities, and I just don’t think I fully realized that whatever I write is going to actually be read by people, and that it may have the ability to influence somebody one way or another.

One thing that has been a constant over this past half-decade is the large fluctuation in the time it takes me to write a certain post.  Some of them will just seemingly write themselves, and I’ll have them all typed out and ready to go in five or 10 minutes.  Other times, I’ll spend a good 60 or 90 minutes trying to figure out what I want to say, how I want to word it, and so on.

I’m a fast typist, and I rarely do any proofreading (other than Firefox’s instant spell-check), so there are bound to be typos.  Now and then, when I look back on an old entry, I’ll see a word that was repeated twice, or something that just doesn’t quite make sense.  Maybe I deleted part of a sentence but left a few words — something like that.  For all the times you have run into that, I apologize.

I’ll also notice now and then — especially in the last several months — the word “I” will sometimes show up uncapped, like “Soon i will do that.”  I actually have a good excuse for that one.  I always hit the right shift key with my pinky.  On my laptop, for some reason the right shift key doesn’t always register.  It’s not really sticky, but it just doesn’t seem to be quite as sensitive as it should be.  And as the text is small on the screen, and a lowercase i and capital I don’t look that different (especially with certain fonts), I sometimes miss those.  Again, I’m sorry. Maybe I need to hire an editor.

This whole blogging experience has been a fun one.  I’m surprised by how much I enjoy it.  What’s kind of funny is that this is only half of the story.  Since January of 2005, I have amassed over 1,200 entries in my super-secret journal.  Of course, that is much more of a true diary than this is, and the standards are much different.  But I suppose there’s no denying that I like writing.  It’s just that creative stuff I’m not real big on.

I hope you enjoy following the blog!  I’m open to ideas for topics to write about, as well as feature requests.  Just write me at luke@famteam.com.

Yesterday, this blog had its first major change in its five years of existence.  It’s obviously quite different visually — which will hopefully be tweaked soon — but it is also very different from a more technical standpoint.

What I did yesterday was move my blog, and all the previous posts, from my old, hand-made system to WordPress.  WordPress is a blogging system, somewhat similar to Blogger or some of the other services out there.

I had several key reasons for making the move:

• Functionality
• Flexibility
• Standardization

Since the old blog “engine” was custom-made, I missed out on a lot of features that have come with the advances in blogging over the past five years.  I added some manually, such as emoticons and tags, but still there was no way I could ever make my blog as advanced as the newest stuff out there.

Of course, I don’t need a lot of the bells and whistles.  But there are some very nice advantages.  One immediate benefit is the editor or the posting page is much nicer.  My old one was basically a giant text field, with no buttons for markup, for links, for quotes — anything like that.  It was just like typing an entry in Notepad — plain text.  So if I wanted to put something in bold,  I would manually type in the <b> and </b> tags.  Likewise, to insert an image, I’d have to use <img>.  The new editor I have is much, much nicer, and it should give me the ability to make the posts “prettier.”

The flexibility and standardization kind of go hand-in-hand.  With my old blog setup, I followed no real rules or standards.  I simply threw something together that worked for me.  The downside of that is it’s not compatible with anything else.  It’s hard to export my posts and use them somewhere else.  It would be difficult to post from my BlackBerry on the old setup.  Now, thanks to having a widely-used platform, I can easily do that.

Another benefit of the standardization is that if I ever want to move my blog somewhere else, all of my entries are neatly contained in a database, and I can easily export them and use them pretty much anywhere imaginable, since they are all kept in a standard format now.

Visually, I’ll have to play with things.  Right now, it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of FamTeam.  We’re obviously missing the menu at the top, which makes navigation a bit tricky.  But I should be able to make this blog much more FamTeam-friendly in the near future.

There was a part of me that didn’t want to move away from the system that I had created.  It had worked very well, and I was proud to have coded it from scratch.  But I figured it really didn’t make much sense to keep my blog in the Stone Age.  Since I’m not an outstanding PHP programmer, it wouldn’t be practical to try to make my blog compete with those out there.  The truth is, people have already done the work for me, and I get to benefit from their job well done.

This move was something that I was wanting to do for a long time.  I just thought it would probably be a good idea to get with the program, to get standardized.  It will make things much easier down the road.  Plus, it gives me the ability to use different plug-ins or add-ons for the blog, providing different features.  The beauty of this is that I have the option, if I decided to, to basically re-style the blog back to its former look.  I can keep the WordPress engine, benefiting from all of its features, and still have my blog look like the old one.  If I wanted to.  I don’t think I will go back to the former style, but I do plan to change this.  I should be able to come up with something nice.

While I’m thinking of it, if there is anybody out there who has a suggestion for a nice WordPress theme (or who is handy with CSS themselves and would like to create/edit one), just let me know!  Drop an e-mail to luke@famteam.com.

As you can see, things look a little different around here!

I spent the last few hours migrating from my old blog to a brand-new one.  There should be lots of benefits from this new setup, and in time I hope to have the Notebook looking more and more like any other FamTeam page.  Right now, I’m just using one of many themes.

I’ll try to explain more soon, sharing why I decided to move, where I moved to, what’s of note, et cetera.  All in good time.

For now, though, I just wanted to let you know that, no, Luke’s Notebook is not broken. I understand it looks quite a bit different.  Just give me a little time, and I’ll explain what’s going on here.

Last year, I noticed something happening in my throwing arm. I would get this pain in my left arm in one of two places. The first area was the top of the biceps muscle. If you hold your arm out flat, palm facing down, it’s right where that little lump is that connects the shoulder to the arm. The second area that would hurt was what I would refer to as the inside of the elbow. Palm facing up, it’s at the top of the elbow crease, where the biceps connects to the forearm.

The elbow pain was more prevalent than the upper-biceps/shoulder pain last year. It seemed to be a fairly constant thing, and it would definitely get worse with me attempting to throw the ball hard from the outfield. Some days were better than others, and it seemed to improve with rest.

Well, I thought I may have had this problem licked. I had been off from softball for about six months, and haven’t really done much throwing over the winter. Through the first three softball games, my arm was feeling pretty good, and I actually made a few really hard throws in from the outfield. Things were looking pretty good!

On Thursday night, after a few hard throws in from the outfield, the same type of elbow pain popped up again. Four games into the 2009 season — a year in which we will likely play 80 to 100 softball games — and my arm is already ready to fall off! Really discouraging.

On Friday, I was just spending some time praying, talking to God about this injury, and a few things just hit me. As I was thinking and praying about this injury, I realized just how amazing it is the way that our bodies function. With most injuries, they will heal in time, on their own. That does not happen to other things. You break a floor tile, and six months later it will still be broken. But our bodies just naturally heal themselves constantly. Imagine if every bump, bruise, or scratch you have ever received was still present!

Another thing that stood out is how the human body is so incredibly fragile, yet it is also extremely durable. Sometimes it’s scary how easily we can break something or injure ourselves, and then it’s amazing to think about all of the things we subject our body to, what a “beating” it takes, and how it tends to just recover on its own.

Finally, I realized that if my greatest worry that day was this — that is, worried about a pain in my arm that is only really an issue when playing softball — which is a game that I pay money to play — if THAT is my biggest concern… then my life is just amazing. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. If something as relatively small as that can be as bad as it gets, I’ll take it.

Obviously, I’m not thrilled about having this flare-up/re-injury. It’s frustrating to have it show up again, and so early in the season. But things could be so much worse! I can still run. I can still hit. I can still catch. I still have the time to play. My family is still healthy and available enough to play. Things are pretty good.

Practically speaking, I’m not exactly sure where to go from here. I think I’ll try playing infield in the few games, as that should be a lot less demanding on the throwing arm. I’ll probably have to figure some sort of long-term plan out, though, as we have many more months of softball ahead of us.

I do wish I knew exactly what is wrong, though, and how to best proceed. I might just try to see a doctor soon, to get some clarity. Right now, I simply don’t know what the best approach would be. I don’t know what exactly is wrong, so I don’t know how to treat it. Is pure rest ideal? Or some light exercise/stretching? How about ways I can prevent something like this in the future?

Many, many questions. I’m sure things will get clearer eventually, and this all will probably be a distant memory at some point. Right now, I’ll just have fun shifting over to the infield. I’m so thankful that despite some nagging issues, I’m still able to play, and still able to do pretty much everything I would want to — minus launching a softball overhand as hard as I possibly can. But other than that, I’m doing great. I don’t think I’m gonna be retiring anytime soon.

I’ve been spending some time reading some old blog posts of mine. The blog began May 23rd, 2004, so we’ve almost had five whole years.

A lot has changed in that time. I look back at my old posts and see how much I’ve matured! The content of the blog has changed substantially, too. Back then, a lot of the entries were short and just about random things that I did. They’re fun to read back on.

Another notable difference is my punctuation! I’ve been a good speller all this time, but my punctuation has improved. More semicolons, hyphens, and dashes these days, and less comma abuse. More smilies back then, for sure. Guess I’m more of a curmudgeon these days… (Hey, there’s a smiley!)

I just think it’s interesting to go back in time. It’s fun to see what was going on back then. I get a glimpse into my mind — what was worrying me, what was exciting me. It’s hard to believe I’ve been at this for that long!

I’ll probably go into some more detail in the near future. I have a few thoughts I’d like to share in regards to just how we got to be where we are today.

The other night, I was driving home, and I was just kind of musing to myself about the situation I find myself in. I thought, “Isn’t it interesting? I’m 24 years old, and I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Before I had any time to really dwell on that, I was instantly hit with the reason why. The reason I don’t have a girlfriend? Well, because, ultimately, I don’t want a girlfriend. A girlfriend, in the classic sense, is not what I’m after.

Honestly, I don’t think it would be that difficult to find a girl who would be pleasant enough to be with, to go out with. Somebody who would be fun to take out to dinner, go bowling with, et cetera — that’s very doable.

But I’m looking for more than just a good date. So when considering a certain girl, I have to think beyond simply, “Okay, would I rather have her with me right now or would I rather not have her?”

I’m not into dating simply for the sake of dating. If I’m interested in a girl, she, in my mind, is not just vying for the spot of girlfriend. The job description is so much more than that. She is a potential wife, potential mother, potential sister-in-law, a potential daughter-in-law. She’s a potential aunt, a potential mother-in-law, a potential grandma!

When I force myself to think beyond my feelings, then the stakes go way up. If I was just looking for a girl who was pretty enough and pleasant enough to go on a date with, that wouldn’t be too hard. The standard isn’t that high. Lots of girls would do just fine.

But when I start to think about what kind of a mom this girl would make, then that raises the ante considerably. “Cute” is no longer good enough, because this is no longer just about me. I’m determined to provide any kids I would have with an outstanding mom, and I would strive to be an outstanding dad.

I’ll admit that dating is enticing! I mean, what guy wouldn’t want a pretty girl at his side to cheer him on in a softball game, or to go out to eat with? Of course that’s appealing. But I’m not going to lower my standards in order to fill that position as soon as possible.

The truth is, I don’t think this is up to me. I don’t actually think this will be an intellectual thing, where I have to carefully evaluate any girl and see if she happens to pass all the tests. I believe that God has an opinion here. I believe that, if He wants me to get married, then He already has that all figured out. I do not think it’s up to me to find her. God is so far ahead of me.

The reason for having this kind of approach is because, like it or not, I still will find myself falling for a girl. And it’s simply an aide of mine, to be able to ask myself these questions, because most of the time, a girl who passes the “Is she cute?” test will instantly fail the “But will she make a great mom?” test.

I’ll be honest. When I see a picture of a girl, the first thing that I notice about her is usually not whether or not she looks like she’d make a tremendous grandma in a few decades. So this whole method of mine is mostly to give myself an easy escape, when my feelings aren’t necessarily exactly where I would want them to be or where they should be. This way, I can tell myself, “No. I don’t care how cute she is, how much fun she is, or how much I just like her right now. She has failed this test. Case closed.”

I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous of me, as if somehow I except multitudes of girls to take a number and wait in line while I run them through some evaluations. That is absolutely not the case. Really, at the end of the day, this is simply a way by which I can guard my heart, to put up a firewall of sorts.

By setting these checkpoints that are more than just superficial — that is, “Well, is she cute?” — qualifications, I think it ends up saving a lot of heartache, for both me and her.

Have you ever been trying to communicate with somebody, yet for some reason you just didn’t have their full attention? Oh, they were trying to appear attentive, but their efforts weren’t convincing. You could recognize that they were simply giving you lip service. They were wanting you to think you had their undivided attention, but for whatever reason they weren’t actually giving it to you.

It’s insulting, and you feel disrespected. You’d almost rather the person not even pretend to be remotely interested, instead of politely giving you lip service. It’s obvious that their heart isn’t in it. You feel like you’re wasting your time.

That’s no fun. It just seems like a very rude thing to do. Nobody wants to feel patronized.

I realize how often we can do this to God. We’ll spend most of our time living a life that is dishonoring and disrespectful to Him, but we’ll still go to church like a good Christian, or we’ll make sure to say the right buzzwords when in a Christian environment.

But do we realize how contemptuous towards God this attitude is?? It’s as if we think that we can fool God. If we put our “Christian time” in every Sunday, we’re doing pretty well, and we are free to go back to our regular lives for the remainder of the week.

If nothing else, it just strikes me how utterly rude this kind of behavior is towards God. It’s as if we think that God doesn’t put two and two together. He doesn’t notice that, when with this crowd, we’re living a very immoral life, but when in church we sing these songs and pray these prayers.

Since we are made in the image of God, I think it’s safe to assume that He appreciates respect just like we do. So if I’m miffed when somebody is just intentionally giving me lip service, how much more offensive is it for me to behave that way towards God?

And what would make it even worse is if I don’t even care about it. I either think He doesn’t notice, or He doesn’t care.

I just think it’s terrible. If I am the least bit sincere about what I claim to believe, then I would not even fathom behaving that way. It is just so incredibly disrespectful, so arrogant. How could I possibly sing another song about how holy, pure, and powerful God is? By my actions, I’d clearly be showing that I don’t really believe it. I don’t believe it enough to show Him the kind of respect that even a human deserves.

Please: Don’t give God lip service. If you’re not committed to going all-out, don’t sing songs about how much you love Him. Don’t pretend that He doesn’t know what you just said, what you just thought, what you just did. Don’t be two-faced.

Isaiah 1 11-17

“The multitude of your sacrifices—

what are they to me?” says the LORD.

“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,

of rams and the fat of fattened animals;

I have no pleasure

in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

12 When you come to appear before me,

who has asked this of you,

this trampling of my courts?

13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

14 Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts

my soul hates.

They have become a burden to me;

I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I will hide my eyes from you;

even if you offer many prayers,

I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood;

16 wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds

out of my sight!

Stop doing wrong,

17 learn to do right!

God had no interest in the sacrifices or prayers of Sodom and Gomorrah, because they weren’t even trying to obey Him. In fact, those actions were actually counterproductive. He hated them! They were a burden to God.

We may be able to fool people, but we can’t fool God. God isn’t going to buy any act of ours. It would be foolish to be one way in front of Christians and another way in front of non-Christians. It’s just such an arrogant move on our part to act as if God either doesn’t notice it, doesn’t care about it, or can’t do anything about it.

If we really love God, we need to always be committed to honor and obey Him first and foremost. Don’t worry about the crowd you’re in or what they may think. God is the only one you should worry about impressing.

Oddly enough, I just received a Bank of America phishing e-mail. And I want to correct the advice to simply pay attention to the right-most .com, .net, or whatever. Here is the link in the e-mail I just got:

http://lowcarbohydratediets.info/wpau-backup/bankofamerica.com/www.bankofamerica.com/accountoverview/bankonline/updateaccount/signon/_cqr_ssl_securedlogin/nextAction=resetidwithatmcardandpin/

As you can see, bankofamerica.com and www.bankofamerica.com do, in fact, show up in the URL, and www.bankofamerica.com is actually the right-most of any of the dot-whatevers.

So really, instead of making a blanket statement, I would just advise people to be smart about what they click on. I mean, to me, the above link is obviously a scam. Yet, I can’t say how apparent or not it will be for another person.

Bottom line: Just be careful about what you click on and where you enter in any kind of sensitive information.

Some of you may be familiar with what is known as “phishing” online. It goes like this: You receive an e-mail, purporting to be from a bank, credit card company, or some online merchant (eBay, Amazon, et cetera). The e-mail looks legit enough, and it’s telling you that there is some issue with your account. They give you some reason to click their link, go to their website, and hopefully enter in your password, credit card number, or Social Security number.

If you’re not paying attention, you might accidentally fall victim to a phishing scam. The links in these e-mails take you to counterfeit versions of a legitimate website. So, for instance, you might get an e-mail that looks like it’s from, say, Bank of America. They tell you there is a problem with your account, and to click a link to log in and correct it.

These can be pretty tricky, although if you know what to look for, they’re very easy to spot.

The key to their success is they will have you think that you are going to the real Bank of America website. When you click the link, what looks like a genuine Bank of America site will pop up. It might look just like the original Bank of America website, with one huge difference. You look at the address bar, and instead of seeing http://www.bankofamerica.com, you see something completely different. It may be a series of numbers (an IP address), such as http://xx.xxx.xxx.xxx, or it might be something long and confusing like http://bankofamerica.whatever.com/security/login.

If you pay attention, you can easily avoid getting tricked by simply watching the address bar. Make sure that bankofamerica.com is in there. If the website is ANY different — even if it contains the phrase “bankofamerica” — there’s a very good chance it’s a fraudulent website, and only exists to capture your account information.

So with a little bit of vigilance, phishing scams are pretty easy to avoid. Basically, if it’s an e-mail supposedly from eBay, then clicking the link should take you to ebay.com — or something containing ebay.com. If it doesn’t, then it’s probably a fake. Sometimes, the scammers get clever and even will make the address something like http://ebay.com.whatever.com/something/… in hopes of getting you to think it’s safe by seeing, “Good! I see ‘ebay.com’ in there. It must be safe.”

It’s a little tricky to explain why this still isn’t safe without getting too technical. To make it simple, I would say look at the right-most .com, .net, or dot-whatever, and make sure the final one is the site you’re thinking you’re visiting. For example, we can have ebay.famteam.com, but it would still fall under the famteam.com umbrella. However, famteam.ebay.com would mean it’s an eBay site.

Anyway, phishing is definitely a worry, but it’s not that difficult to spot… most of the time.

Imagine this: You visit www.bankofamerica.com. It looks just like your normal banking site. Nothing could possibly go wrong; right?

Well… not necessarily.

There is this practice called DNS hijacking, which is extremely scary. To understand this fully, you should first know that any given website — domain name — redirects to a number, what’s called an IP address. Think of this as a physical address for a computer. So, for instance, www.bankofamerica.com’s IP address might be 171.161.161.173.

When you enter www.bankofamerica.com into your browser’s address bar, behind the scenes your computer is finding out what bankofamerica.com’s IP address is, if it doesn’t know it already or “remember” it in its cache.

This is all done in milliseconds, so we don’t really notice it. But that’s what is going on in the background. Enter address -> browser translates bankofamerica.com into an IP address -> browser then loads the website at that IP address.

The process of translating a domain name into an IP address is known as DNS resolution. DNS hijacking occurs when you are redirected to a different IP address other than the authentic one.

This would mean that you can enter www.bankofamerica.com into your address bar, yet your are getting redirected, behind the scenes, to a phony BOA website. And since the counterfeit sites can look identical to the authentic ones, how in the world would you know the difference? You would go ahead and enter in whatever information you had to, unaware that you’re just giving away this sensitive info.

Scared yet?

What really frightens me is that the telltale sign of visiting a fake (phishing) website has always been weirdness in the address bar. Instead of www.bankofamerica.com, you’d see something else, and that would be a dead giveaway. But that’s not the case in this instance, because you ARE going to bankofamerica.com; yet your computer has essentially been “tricked” into accessing a dangerous website.

And unless you would pay very close attention to what IP address you are actually talking to when you visit a given site — which, honestly, is very unlikely — you would likely have no idea that you are in an unsafe situation.

The reason this is so fresh in my mind is because it just happened. I worked on a computer recently that couldn’t get online. It could access the local network just fine, but it couldn’t bring up any websites.

After my usual troubleshooting steps proved unsuccessful, I was a little baffled. Eventually, I got around to looking at the IP configuration settings, and I finally saw that the DNS servers had been changed. So instead of the computer automatically getting the DNS information from a trusted source, the computer was trying to access these specific servers.

Imagine a DNS server containing an extremely long mapping of domain names and their corresponding IP addresses, such as:

famteam.com: 100.100.100.100

google.com: 200.200.200.200

bankofamerica.com 210.210.210.210

ebay.com 101.101.101.101

…and so on.This computer’s DNS being “hijacked” or pointed to a DIFFERENT server other than the trusted one meant that, in theory, the “hijacker” could have edited ANY website out there, sending the user to any fraudulent website. Imagine a listing that would redirect traffic to www.mcafee.com to a fake McAfee site that lets you download a “fix” which is, instead, a virus. Scary stuff.

Thankfully, none of that happened in this case, since the change in the DNS servers rendered the Internet unusable. But it could have very well have been working perfectly, with a few select sites being forged. That is a scary thought, in my opinion.

I think we were very fortunate to have this “hijack” do no damage but only keep us offline until we fixed it. It could have easily gone undetected for the longest time, and damage could have been done.

This is one of those new threats which really scares me, because it seems so difficult to detect, yet has potential to cause all sorts of problems.

Obviously, this is something we all want to avoid. A good practice would be to have an antivirus program running, and to follow smart practices online. That is, don’t open strange attachments. Be careful what you say “Yes” or “Allow” to when visiting a website. In this particular case, the DNS-altering virus was contracted by installing what was believed to be a legitimate Flash plugin. Instead, it was a bogus update that ended up changing the DNS settings on the computer and putting it in a very risky position. I’m just very relieved that we caught it before any damage was done!