Declutter (your inbox) for a cause

We publish "scam alerts" in this newspaper periodically. Often we receive a press release from the AARP, and other times local authorities notify us that there has been a victim of a particular scam in our area.

As I'm sure most do, I receive an endless sea of spam and phishing emails on a daily basis. Some days I spend more time clearing out unwanted messages than I do responding to actual requests from real people.

Yesterday took the cake though. Since I began serving on the North Dakota Newspaper Association board nearly four years ago, I have gotten random emails that appear to come from the president of the organization. These messages have the person's name in the "from" field, and usually ask me to "discreetly" purchase gift cards for the organization's use. There is usually no signature, and upon closer inspection it's clear that the email address associated is not the president's actual email.

Currently I'm the president of NDNA, and yesterday I got an email like that from myself! Now this isn't totally out of the ordinary, because I often send myself email reminders to complete tasks or follow up on text messages I've received. However, this was different. It was one of "those messages."

"Yes, Amy, get right on that. Purchase some gift cards already, and be discreet, for goodness sake!"

Several months ago, the Executive Director of NDNA received one of those messages that appeared to come from me. The sender wrote, "I just need you to handle something discreetly for me now. Here's what I want you to do for me. I aimed at surprising some of our diligent staff with gift cards. This should be Confidential until they all have the gift cards. Can you get this done? and how soon?"

She first called me to confirm that I did not, in fact, want her to purchase gift cards for the staff (of course I didn't), and then she decided to find out what would happen if she actually responded to the dirtbag. She has a good sense of humor, so she replied, "This is the FBI with Cybersecurity . . . you are about to be taken down!"

Yes, she got a response, and it was certainly not what she expected. The reply was an image of a man giving her the bird! He was wearing a delightful Hawaiian print button up, and it looked like a carpeted wall behind him. Scumbag!

At the newspaper office, we often get emails appearing to be from Norton or the Geek Squad, stating that they will be debiting our account for a subscription renewal. We also get numerous emails with "invoices" attached or linked for things we didn't purchase, which can certainly be tricky considering that more and more of our vendors are sending invoices by email rather than in the mail. Hence why it takes so long to go through the inbox and filter out unwanted messages.

Dear readers and customers, if you send us an email and you don't get a response, give our office a call. It's quite possible that we deleted your message thinking it was spam, or it was filtered out and put in our spam box, never to be seen by a human.

On this page this week, there's a column from Danny Tyree. He talks about how messy his vehicle is, and how he struggles to keep it clean.

Folks, I certainly don't have the cleanest vehicle, but it's much less time consuming to pull the garbage out of my massive Suburban than it is to go through the five inboxes I manage. I use gmail, and I sure appreciate the "promotions" and "social" filters. Many of the unwanted marketing emails go into one of those for easy deletion, but it seems that plenty always find a way to get through.

Did you know February is Declutter for a Cause Month? What a great concept. While everyone else is cleaning out their closets and garages to donate to charity, I'll be busy trying to keep my inbox messages under 5,000 and responding to people who emailed me a month ago.

Welcome Elise!

The Independent is hosting CHS student Elise Wilde for a work experience this semester. She is interested in a career in graphic design, so we started by having her update some of our house ads and do some tutorials. She also recently learned how to perforate raffle tickets, and she's really good at it! This past week she tried her hand at writing a feature story. Her first-ever published article is on page A2 this week, as she wrote about the "Night to Shine" event she attended on Feb. 10. I have a feeling this will be the first of many bylines Elise gets in the paper over the next few months, so watch for more from her.

Winter sports season gets interesting

It might be icy outside, but the winter sports season is heating up in gymnasiums across the state.

In the Transcript, we're highlighting the girls' and boys' basketball teams as they enter postseason tournament play. This week we feature the Rocket girls, who have the #3 seed going into the Super Region 4 tournament. We have one year off from district tournaments, as Region 4 was changed to a Super Region format this season. Next year, with the new three-class system going into place, we will again have both district and regional tournaments.

Both the Carrington Cardinals and Medina-Pingree/Buchanan Thunder girls had success in their respective district tournaments and advanced to play in the Region 3 basketball tournament. The boys begin postseason play this Friday.

In closing, I want to give a shout out to all the area wrestlers who competed at the state tournament this past weekend. Erik Gjovik was at the Fargodome for all the action. Watch for our expanded sports section in the Feb. 27 edition of the Independent, as we commemorate the Carrington Cardinal girls' wrestling team's first trip to state in school history (which also happens to be their first year as a program). There were 30 state qualifiers in the region individual tournament from HWC and Carrington, both boys and girls. Well done!