Emails from the President
Being very computer, I have a laptop. Being less computer, my wife does not, but I am more than happy to let her use mine on the few occasions she needs it.
Last night, she needed to us the laptop to type up some charts for work. When she opened it up, my email app was on the screen. I always have my email pulled up as my "primary" page, even though I don't actually receive that many emails (but hey, if you wanted to, hello at skep dot place). This is probably a behavior I picked up to fill the void of not having Twitter always at the ready after I stopped using it in 2018.
Anyway, earlier I'd gotten an alert on my phone that I'd received an email from US president Joe Biden, but I was busy at the time and swiped it away. Of course it was just a campaign email; and my wife knew that too, but when she glimpsed the unread notification at the top of my inbox, she had to point it out. "Oh, you're getting emails from Biden now?!"
And that gave me an idea for a dumb bit. Wouldn't it be kind of funny to create a fake email account, attach the name "Joe Biden" to it, and send myself emails from that account from time to time? Slowly, just a new one every so often. Start to fill my inbox full of emails from the president. Yesterday it was a campaign email, but what if tomorrow it was a recruitment offer? Later, details of a dangerous mission for which I am the most qualified individual? Following that, a personalized thank-you for ensuring the safety of the country?
What would my wife think, if every time she opened my laptop she noticed the president was sending me communications with increasing frequency and urgency? Would she buy in? Would she open one to see what it said? Would she believe it more if I asked ChatGPT to write plausible-sounding emails? What if I made another account for whichever candidate takes office next year?
...More importantly, would she think to check the email address of the sender? No way I could fake that convincingly. So, uh, I guess let's call this dumb use of effort less "pranking my wife" and more "testing her cybersecurity awareness". Sounds better that way.