{"id":4635,"date":"2019-02-11T07:18:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T06:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4635"},"modified":"2019-04-22T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:30:00","slug":"the-life-and-times-of-fausto-carro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4635","title":{"rendered":"The Life and Times of Fausto Carro"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Ah, Fausto Carro <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last week, after doing some work for an online magazine, I was\nasked to send along the details of my online payment account. I won\u2019t say the name\nof that payment company, but Scooby Doo would probably call it RayRal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t have an account there, so I began to set one up. And\nthat of course is when I found out I had an account there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memberships to websites, online magazines, and services are as\nforgettable to me now as the magazine subscriptions I signed up for in college\nin our quad. I\u2019d use a false name \u2013 Larry D\u2019Urberville \u2013 with my sights set on\na free T shirt. Free T shirts were gold when the alternative was washing your\nother 75 T shirts. Ah, the carefree and extremely dirty days of yore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Anyway, while I was mildly surprised that I might sign up\nfor an online payment system and had no recollection at all of creating one, it\nwasn\u2019t completely out of the realm of possibility. Especially if they were to\nsend me a T shirt in the mail. So I requested a new password via email. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s then, as you will have probably guessed at this point,\nthat I learned that the account wasn\u2019t in my name at all.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, according to RayRal, I am Fausto Carro. Exotic. Italian.\nA racecar driver or a grizzled submariner. Not a university teacher who talks\nto his cat, whose body can\u2019t digest certain kinds of cheese, and who has a vegetable\nschedule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possibility of identity theft is a terrifying reality in\nour world, and one with which most people have had some sort of an unpleasant run-in.\nBut like many things we take precautions and then put it out of our minds. That\nsomeone is out there facelessly using your name to run up debt or engage in\nshady dealings is something you might not worry about until it happens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I instantly wrote to the company. Judging from the fact that\nthey seem to ignore the content of my emails and simply castigate me while referring\nto me as \u201cFausto Carro\u201d suggests that they staff its customer service branch\nwith bots who weren\u2019t good enough to land work at Amazon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for a week (or longer, I guess), in the eyes of RayRal, I have been Fausto Carro. I have been penalized with a \u201climited account\u201d by the company and have been scolded for \u201cunusual activity.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have searched my own inbox and found three emails to me as Fausto Carro. One welcoming me to the RayRal family, the next reminding me of all the neato benefits of being a member of the RayRal family, the third telling me about a sweet deal for preferred customers. I suppose that one of those was willy nilly using an email address that you can\u2019t check. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, Fausto Carro doesn\u2019t seem to have a wild life,\neven RayRal seems disappointed with him. Perhaps I should take on the demeanor\nof an Italian submariner, buy myself a peacoat and a striped shirt, but there\u2019s\na chance I\u2019m mixing that up with some other national stereotype. I think I\u2019ll\ncheck him out on Facebook next and see what comes up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if that son of a bitch got my T shirt.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, Fausto Carro Last week, after doing some work for an online magazine, I was asked to send along the details of my online payment account. I won\u2019t say the name of that payment company, but Scooby Doo would probably call it RayRal. I didn\u2019t have an account there, so I began to set one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1cL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4637,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}