Astaink no more...

At the risk of sounding like some old codger recalling her days of yore, I want to make the following statement:

I remember life before e-mail.

Heck, I remember life before cell phones. When I was pregnant with my now-thirteen-year-old son, I didn’t own a cell phone. Neither did my husband. We had pagers (also called “beepers” for you young’uns). But I digress.

Somewhere around this same time period, my husband bought a home computer and set us up with email. This was when you had two choices of Internet access: AOL or CompuServe (my codger is showing again). During this time, I had to choose a screen name. Thinking myself clever, I chose the same name as my freelance writing business: Asta Ink. Asta is my middle name and Ink because I’m a writer. I even had fancy business cards with images of fountain pen nibs. So I figured Asta Ink would be a unique screen name that would tie in well with my business.

Here’s the problem. As the Internet grew, so did the number of Internet providers. And while it was all well and good that within the world of AOL I was “Asta Ink”, outside of that particular part of cyberspace my screen name suddenly became one word: astaink.

Astaink…it could be “a stink” misspelled. It could be stink’s past tense: stank. It could be a combination of “stink” and “stank”. Add in a “stunk” and I could be a line from How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

In any case, it lost the professionalism and polish I had intended.

However, by this time it was the email address with which all my friends and business associates were familiar. It was on my business cards. It was on my resume. Every online website that had an account for me (eBay, Amazon, etc.) had that name. So the idea of changing my email identification, and all the work associated with it, was daunting. My vanity would have to take a back seat to practically. I stayed “astaink”.

Fast-forward ten years. The Internet is everywhere. My contacts, associates and accounts have increased a hundred fold. In addition to emailing, I’m Facebooking, twittering and blogging. Astaink is everywhere. I’m used to explaining it to the inquisitive and spelling it for help desk professionals overseas: “a” as in apple, “s” as in Sam, “t” as in Tom…” etc. etc. etc.

And yet, my whole history of being “Astaink” was jeopardized with just one wrong mouse click.

I received one of those “phishy” emails, the ones that seem like they might actually be from AOL or Bank of America or one of many other online accounts to which I subscribe. Typically I delete without even opening these emails, or if I think it could possibly be legitimate, I use my family’s Mac computer instead (Macs are nearly impervious to worms, viruses and other nasty creations typically targeted to PCs).
But something about this particular email seemed legit, so I did the unthinkable: I clicked. From my PC. And I have regretted it ever since.

Over the subsequent weeks, nearly every friend or contact in my address book has received emails from “astaink” touting everything from twitter to Viagra. I’ve tried running anti-viral software, to no avail. I changed my email password, twice. I had my friend’s husband, who is a PC mastermind, remove a “Trojan Horse” (that sounds nasty) from my PC and install even more anti-viral software. And I changed my password again.

And still the “phishy” emails are sent from poor, innocent, ignorant “astaink”.

And so it’s time to change to a new e-mail. I’ve switched my provider to Yahoo (appropriate since I consider myself a “yahoo” for falling for that “phishy” email in the first place). And though I toyed with the idea of continuing my use of “astaink” as part of my new email address, I decided it was time to let that part of my past go.

Goodbye “astaink”. It’s time to let the air clear and start fresh as someone else.