A hacker needs only about 1 day to crack a seven-character password that contains only numbers and lower-case letters. This moves up to 40 days when the user includes capital letters. Increasing the number of characters in your password from 7 to 8 will force a hacker to spend almost 7 years trying to crack it.
The top 12 password-cracking techniques used by hackers:
https://www.itpro.com/security/34616/the-top-password-cracking-techniques-used-by-hackers
Whistleblowers and Retaliation
A Whistleblower is technically a person associated with a corporation or government agency that blows the whistle on wrongdoing as it pertains to waste, fraud and abuse. The whistleblowers we have spoken with have described how they experienced retaliation. After Inside Timeshare doesn’t meet the definition of a traditional whistleblower, but we have been on the receiving end of retaliation. Charles provides a remarkable summary of malicious attempts at the end of today’s report.
There are laws protecting traditional whistleblowers, but not individuals. African American Rosa Parks, as an individual, committed a courageous and dangerous act. She sat at the front of the bus in Deep South America during an earlier period of racial hate. It was a small act, possibly inspired by the actions and words of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., although Ms Parks was once quoted, “I was just trying to get home.”
Dr King was not so naïve as to think he was going to resolve the racial divide once and for all. He knew this problem would not likely be solved in his lifetime. That did not deter his efforts. We won’t overcome unfair and deceptive timeshare practices, but we can make a difference in our own small way over our lifetimes. Too many financially devastated families have reached out to us.
Speak Truth to Power is a term I learned at the Whistleblower Summit I attended a few years ago in Washington DC. I was asked to serve on a panel to discuss resiliency. I thought I understood the word, but it wasn’t until I experienced classic retaliation the following year, at the hands of a timeshare developer, that I really learned what resiliency means.
I suspect the retaliation that After Inside Timeshare is experiencing is coming from resources retained by Westgate Resorts. This is based on the fact that a few weeks ago, I noticed that I had been removed from the Westgate Timeshare Hostages Facebook Group, which consists of over 2,000 members. When I inquired, two of the Group’s admins saw that they had also been removed. It’s easy to hack into someone’s Facebook account, but I’ve not heard of admins being removed from a Facebook Group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/westgatehostages/
The same week the two admins and I were removed from the Facebook Group, and two members posted a picture of Westgate Resorts owner and billionaire, David Siegel. They posted, “Guess who is a suggested Friend?!” It was Mr Siegel. He obviously has better things to do than harass us, but the level of sophistication of the so far attempted access indicates someone or a company with resources.
About the same time that I was removed from the Westgate Hostages Facebook Group After Inside Timeshare began to experience a dramatic escalation in unauthorized log-in attempts, consistently now over 700 unauthorized attempts a day. Of course, there is no way we can identify this hacker with malicious intent, but it’s clear we have struck a nerve. Over 90% of the attempts are using my User ID to attempt to log in. Maybe there’s no conspiracy, just a resourceful sales agent with specialized skills and nothing better to do, but the truth will continue to be told.
Listed below are reports from the four whistleblowers we have reported on so far. We will report on the 5th whistleblower next Friday. Our 6th whistleblower’s report was obtained from a court filing submitted by a former timeshare executive describing how the timeshare company she works for manipulates inventory, to the detriment of owners. The 7th is a whistleblower who recently reached out. We’ve heard from several over the years, including a few executives.
Phrases I learned at the Whistleblower Summit:
A whistleblower doesn’t know they are a whistleblower until they are halfway through their whistle-blowing.
Whistleblowers could not live with themselves if they did not report wrongdoing.
Whistleblowers of America (WoA) is an organization dedicated to supporting whistleblowers. A Navy veteran who experienced timeshare fraud introduced me to founder Jackie Garrick in 2017. I encourage our timeshare whistleblowers to reach out to WoA to find needed support.
https://whistleblowersofamerica.org/
Excerpts from our Whistleblower panel discussion on resiliency
We discussed the key ingredients for surviving Whistleblower Retaliation as well as the importance of peer support. Questions I was asked:
- Did you pick your advocacy or did it pick you? (It seemed to pick me)
- How do you use your own experiences to benefit others? (I was offered a refund helped by three Attorneys’ General complaint filings.)
- Do you see the need for a Whistleblower Protection Advocate as a profession? (Yes)
I heard Dr Aaron Westrick speak at the Whistleblower Summit. He blew the whistle on defective bulletproof vests that resulted in the death of police officers. Instead of being thanked for bringing this to the attention of the manufacturers, he was dragged through the courts for years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv2LDgdD92s
https://www.bodyarmornews.com/faulty-body-armor-case-featured-on-cbss-whistleblowerseries/
The Resilient Advocate – Elements, Ethics and End Results (from Whistleblowers of America)
There is no denying that whistleblowers face societal stigmas and negative responses to their disclosures. The term whistleblower is all too often painted as “rat, snitch, or tattletale” including when conducting Microsoft Office synonym searches. These negative connotations have a psychological impact on ethical people who faced difficult decisions and took the high road to do the right thing.
In rare events, some whistleblowers receive media recognition as heroes, such as in the movie portrayals of Serpico, Silkwood or Brockovich. Most whistleblowers face years and years of retaliation, harassment and discrimination. They are subjected to hostile work environments and workplace trauma. When they are marginalized, devalued, shunned or experience face mobbing, gaslighting or violence, then they are harmed in other ways.
Whistleblowers risk losing their financial stability, social status, and family security, and their physical and emotional health is impacted. As they move through and beyond the whistle-blowing process, they must learn how to define their “new normal” and experience post-traumatic growth that comes from surviving hardships and rebuilding their sense of self and purpose.
Resilience is the state of mind, body, and spirit that allows a person to overcome adversity and experience growth. The resiliency skills needed to overcome whistleblower retaliation, discrimination or harassment in the workplace is an important discussion. Some of the concepts surrounding resilience include mindfulness, meditation, gratitude and forgiveness (of self and others). The words “disengage when necessary” helps with RESILIENCY. Hurtful potshots from opponents can weigh us down or sharpen our swords.
We want to let our readers know, if our bad guy is successful in suppressing your voice and ours, you will understand why. But we will always find a way to allow our voices to be heard. No good whistleblower worth their salt does not experience some form of retaliation.
Our Whistleblower Reports
Wyndham whistleblower Tiffany Birch, February 3, 2023
https://afterinsidetimeshare.com/another-wyndham-whistleblower-lawsuit/
Former Bluegreen Manager Denise Mecke and former Wyndham sales agent Julie Havey, March 24, 2023
Former Diamond Resorts QA agent Gina Mori, March 31, 2023
https://afterinsidetimeshare.com/a-former-quality-assurance-agents-lawsuit-against-diamond-resorts/
Westgate Whistleblowers
Moving on
Thank you, Irene, along with the attempted log-ins, we have also received several emails regarding the Website, Email and Facebook, all of which are fake. The one supposedly from Fb regarding “community standards” is a very poor attempt.
As you can see, this raises suspicions straight away, especially after never receiving any emails from Facebook since first signing up. One thing that did stand out was the email address, it just didn’t look right, so that one was just ignored, no point in telling Fb, they don’t care.
The next was a little bit better at looking genuine, well at first glance, again there were some points which didn’t look quite right.
Firstly, the email address from the sender, it would appear that AIT sent it to itself, not bad considering AIT does not have an email called support. The message in the email is contradicting itself, if 15 messages are being “held back” as the “inbox” is full, how did this message get through?
Not a detail that you would normally think of granted, but once your suspicions are aroused, well little points like that do come up.
The next tell-tale sign is the company address, it is Jacksonville USA, yes, AIT is hosted by IONOS along with the email, but we don’t deal with the US company. All our correspondence is done with Spain, plus we deal with the same person at all times.
The second email again had the same alarm signals, the email address is not one that we have on file for our dealing with IONOS. This time it was to tell us that the password will expire for our email address, to prevent this from happening a button has been conveniently provided to confirm the password.
The letter is signed by Gunter Eberling, 1 & 1 Head of Customer Satisfaction. Well, Gunter is an actual person, he has a LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-gunter-eberling-2571a768/?originalSubdomain=de
Which shows his illustrious career, including at IONOS and 1 & 1.
Both emails were confirmed by IONOS as being fake, something we have seen all too often on our pages with all the fake law firms. Company logos, addresses and even employees’ identities are being stolen for nefarious purposes.
Considering what AIT does in exposing scam operations and explaining how to spot potential scams and using caution, this is a classic example of how you must not become complacent and keep your due diligence on track.
Along with the increase in malicious login attempts, these emails are more than likely designed to cause operational problems with the website and emails rather than financial ones. We leave it to you our readers to make up your own minds as to who may be behind this, we have our suspicions based on the increase in attempts which are related to our articles.
These types of emails appear every day and for different products, only today on one of our local groups, someone placed a warning that a scam message/email is doing the rounds. It claims that “your payment method has been declined” for the Disney+ subscription and the account has been suspended. It conveniently has a “continue” button which the poster unfortunately pressed and carried out the payment, to only later find they had been scammed. No checks just complied with the message and paid, that is what the scammers are counting on.
That is it for this week, we have just received some new information on our old friend Anfi on Gran Canaria, as soon as we verify the information we shall publish the news, hopefully, next week. What we can tell you is there is a lot of behind-the-scenes movement and more intrigue. We hope you have a great weekend, hopefully, the temperatures are cooling after yet another sweltering Calima here, Baby Dog has made his intentions very clear.
Jacqueline Garrick
Whistleblowers of America is a peer support network for employees who blow the whistle when they see wrongdoing within their organization. We have supported timeshare employees who want organizations held accountable and have joined forces with purchasers who felt misled in the sales pitch. No one should sign a contract without an attorney or under pressure. Retaliation is always a serious mental health crisis so seek help.
Irene Parker
Thank you Jacqueline for being there and for the remarkable amount of information and RESILIENCY I gained by attending the Whistleblower Summit in 2019. Thank you also for supporting former timeshare sales agent whistleblowers of which there are several.
Francine Dygulski
This just proves how selfish and decisive all These
Timeshare companies are. They are the definition of American greed and all the company owners and salespeople should have a show produced just for them! If it weren’t for the
Courageous people Coming forward to file complaints, there would be even more people hurt by these companies, so keep up the good
Fight !!