News
July 12, 2024: Scam warning: offshore criminals are impersonating me in a gift card scam by registering fake Gmail email addresses and putting my name in the From: field, and asking prospective victims for phone numbers. They then send iMessages/text messages to victims who reply. The requests are illegitimate requests for money that have nothing to do with me. Note that I do not use an iPhone and have no devices that send iMessages. Accordingly, verify all emails purporting to be from me with SPF/DKIM/DMARC, which are available in the raw source/headers of all legitimate emails from me and my law firm. Confirm by phone any unusual requests or instructions, such as making payments or advancing money. Note that I only use my 415 number (+1 (415) 261-8527) and not Google Voice, for this very reason. I have added a filter on my email server that should catch all emails with my name in the From: field but the wrong sender address. That protects folks within the law firm, but third parties are on their own. This same thing happened to another local attorney whose email got hacked and used for a major phishing campaign. Fortunately, I have my own server and will be immune to that, but vigilance is still required. Forward all suspicious emails to abuse@google.com and cc me at andrew@andrewwatters.com.
July 12, 2024: My Trial Laboratory will be completed by the 26th. Very excited!
July 5, 2024: I had a nightmare scenario power failure because of a PG&E outage on Wednesday night, allegedly due to the extreme weather in the Bay Area. My email never went down because I have a backup email server at my home office that holds all email received during a power outage until the main server is back online. My portfolio of websites was down for about 12 hours, unfortunately. That's really embarrassing, but there was nothing I could do quickly that evening while out of town for the 4th of July holiday. I temporarily fixed the system remotely on the morning of the 4th using what I think is an innovative technique: X11 forwarding over a SSH tunnel to log into my workstation at the office remotely, from where I was able to access my router and temporarily reroute traffic to the old web server. I discovered today that the new web server that I literally just installed a month ago crashed on startup for reasons unknown, which is why it didn't automatically come back on. It's fixed now. In the future, I will ensure I have IPMI access remotely from my destination before I even leave town, as that is what it took to handle this problem and was a tedious, nail-biting effort. It was a 10 out of 10 on difficulty, and it's also possible I wouldn't have solved it at all.
June 20, 2024: Announcing The Polite Gunfighter® CCW insurance program. This is my best-ever business concept, which brings together my network of attorneys, insurance professionals, forensic psychology providers, and shooting sports enthusiasts. Details will be added to the website in the near future.
