The miracles of modern technology and inter-connection have a dark side.
When your fingers touch a keyboard in an internet café, or when they enter a pin number at an ATM machine, or swipe a credit card, you take a risk. When you write an e-mail, your personal information isn’t necessarily private.
Any wireless device can be tapped by clever hackers, and internet cafes are hardly secure if someone with access is interested in you. Even your wireless keyboard at home can be hacked from outside.
In cyberspace, your words may be used against you, your money may be stolen, you may be told later that you have purchased items you didn’t want from stores you never heard of. Finally, even your name can be stolen and used to commit crimes for which you may be held responsible.
This doesn’t happen everyday, but it does happen often enough. If you can get through your life without ever being caught in one these traps, you’re lucky.
If it does happen to you, the result can be only a minor annoyance — or you can lose a lot of money, lose your reputation, and lose a lot of time trying to correct the situation. Sometimes it’s too late to correct it. Too bad.
Years ago, only radio stations and large operations like the police and fire departments could broadcast through the air. The equipment needed was heavy and very expensive, and the public had no access to it. Ordinary people used telephones with wires , or wrote letters and mailed them.
This took effort. After all, to use a wired phone, you have be wherever it is. To use the mail, you have to write on paper and pen, use an envelope, and go to the post office. And only when there was something you had to say.
But walk down any city street today, look inside any passing car and see everyone in sight on their cell phones, often talking about nothing: “I’m passing the boulevard now” “There’s a nice shirt in the window here”.
And what was once clear air is now filled with the thick, heavy soup of wireless microwaves.
Now, as you walk down the street and chat with your absent friends, as you sit down in front of a keyboard and open the internet, just remember — someone you don’t know may be listening, and watching you.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com
