Just How Safe Are We? The Demise of the Web? Part Two

First published November 2016


Just November 1 news broke that Microsoft Windows has "vulnerabilities" that are being "exploited," Microsoft claims, by the Russians. Folks, the Russians, the Chinese, Santa's reindeer, the Man in the Moon, IT DOESN'T MATTER! It shows they cannot protect these systems! They can't do it! They don't know what to do. There have always been hackers and scammers on the Internet, but in the last few years there has been an explosion of events, as the "bad guys" have done what bank robbers do, they go where the money is. It all started out as the technology that would lead to all sorts of new things, and they convinced many people, but not all, that the Internet was safe; you could do banking, you could do shopping, you could have medical records available and shared with healthcare providers, you could share personal info and photos, and on and on, AND it would be safe. All of those transactions and info sharing have happened, and businesses have invested enormous amounts of money in websites and advertising to take advantage of this new gold mine. I'm sure some people saw the potential downside, there's ALWAYS a downside, but obviously the big money people did not see that the "bad guys" were sitting out there saying, "Hmm, we want in on all of this money. Let's do it!" So identity theft is up, medical prescription fraud is up, draining of individual's gift cards is up, people being threatened to cough up money is up, people being duped into giving bank account numbers or credit card numbers is up, on and on. Computers are being used to launch mass email sendings and to make mass phone call dialings. So, while technology made our lives easier on some things, it also made it easier for criminals.

So in the last few years, after big business sold us a gazillion smartphones, a half a gazillion tablets, and a gazillion laptops and desktop computers, we've heard, "BREAKING NEWS! Target was hacked and information for over a hundred million customers was breached." This was not all, as we've also heard about Chick-fil-A, Neiman Marcus, P.F. Chang's, United Parcel Service, aka, UPS, Yahoo (a company that works hard to earn that name, which it has) and many more. Not only these, but also none other than the Pentagon, THE headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, was hacked. The list goes on and on, and these are the ones where there has been acknowledgement of being hacked. Folks, you have to believe, if the Pentagon can be hacked, no one person, no entity anywhere in the world is safe. But just to add to the list showing how serious all of this is, recently Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, had her passport photo show up online, after being released by hackers. Not only that, they had information about Vice President Biden and Secret Service deployment.

So we hear about these things happening all the time, but what they won't tell you is, there is NO fix to any of this; at least no long term fix, OR, if there is a fix, why isn't it being implemented? Got to be powerful entities and individuals stopping it. We're all as vulnerable as a Microsoft Windows system. Ah, by the way, most of you probably recognize the name "Adobe," but what you may not know, not that it has been hidden, is that their "Flash Player" has had very serious vulnerabilities; so serious, in fact, that some companies dropped the use of the Adobe product. Let me tell you what I know about tech stuff, well ..... you could fit it all on the head of a pin. But folks, you don't have to know ANYTHING about technology to see what's happening. News stories appear ever more frequently about hackers and about how hackers can take over your camera and microphone on your device, and then spy on you! It wasn't too long ago that I saw where none other than Mark Zuckerberg covers his camera lens and microphone because of this possibly. Zuckerberg is a billionaire from the Internet, if he's scared, you should be TERRIFIED!     

Now too that business interests have us so tied to the Internet, we find that our very democracy can be tampered with. The Democratic National Committee was hacked, and there has been fear that voter registration might be affected, as many states now have online registration. Even voting machines or at least voting data that might be stored online will also be vulnerable. And what name so often appears in association with the 2016 election and tampering? RUSSIA!

More in Part Three...

WORD HISTORY:
For-This highly common word goes back to Indo European "per," which had the notion, "forward, in the front;" thus, "before, to the front, ahead, head toward." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "furi," meaning, "forward, before," as the Indo European "p" became Old Germanic "f." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "for," meaning, "for this reason, before, ahead of." It has remained such for all of these many centuries. The other Germanic languages have: German "für," Low German Saxon and Swedish "för," Dutch "voor," West Frisian "foar," Danish and Norwegian "for," Icelandic "fyrir."