Victoria Jelinek

Cyber warfare truly is the combat of the future. Over the last year, I’ve had all of my credit details stolen via Experian, the credit monitoring agency in the USA, and my passport and credit card details hacked via the British Airways site. That’s right, the almighty social security number every American is told to guard with their lives has been exposed – what an ineffective way to identify a person. I have diligently had my credit report monitored and received yearly reports because I have bought into the idea of identity theft and the need to protect my credit rating in case I want to buy more stuff. Then the very agency gets hacked (with the CEO’s of said company resigning mere weeks before the news broke and those of us effected were alerted). I can barely access my own bank accounts in the USA because of the levels of ‘security’ on my account, with numerous passwords and questions/answers that I simply forget. Which means, I can’t even prove I’m me often enough, yet others can break into the “super secure” storaging systems of corporate entities. This week, I received an email that had the password to my computer in its subject line, and then there was a letter of blackmail. The letter tells me that I have two weeks to pay $1000 to a bitcoin account (with no reference number or name, so I’m not sure how they’d know it was me if I paid up, or why they would stop at that). If I don’t pay up, all of the contacts I have on social media and via my email accounts, will receive an email telling everyone that I watch pornography and am a disreputable person, etc.

Meanwhile, Trump and his cronies pretend to question the need for increased cyber security? Oi vey. Well, we know why that is, but I won’t digress.

As a result of this threatening email (yes, I have been known to watch porn online – adult, consensual material, with the knowledge of my husband) I have spent the day changing passwords for the myriad of accounts that I use online, updating spyware software, running diagnostic checks to make sure that my system is still not hacked (the software identified two threats and removed them) and eliminating saved details across accounts. Not because I’m afraid that all of my contacts will receive a disparaging email from these unknown assailants, but because I am thoroughly freaked out that the camera on my computer may have a little hacker eye looking at me, and a little hacker ear listening to my computer’s microphone, and these same hackers are aware of all of my personal and professional banking details, accounts, behavior, interests, as well as my thoughts and wishes conveyed via personal missives.

In my day, receiving phone calls at home from telemarketers was considered intrusive. Is this how “progress” is defined? What a waste of a day. What a waste of humanity’s technological ingenuity that it has come to this: intruding, blackmailing, and threatening your fellow (small change) man in order to get a few bucks simply because you can.