As much as I am fascinated by all the ways we connect meaningfully with each other in life, I can’t deny there is both healthy connection and dangerous connection. Watch this short (under 2-1/2 minutes) video of a fascinating experiment done in Belgium with a so-called clairvoyant who tells his clients incredibly personal and private things that he should have no way of knowing. Stick with it to the end to discover the secret to his amazing ability to “read the minds” of his clients.
I am not naive when it comes to the need for personal and cybersecurity. I am careful to make sure the security settings of all my social media profiles are set sensibly. But I order things online with credit cards and I have paid bills online. My safety is only as secure as the security of the financial institutions or retailers I’m using, and we’ve all heard the horror stories about successful hacking into well-known business and government websites.
I don’t know what the answer is, but if you’re active online, I just beg you to be careful. Identity theft protection, once an extra expense that seemed unnecessary, may be increasingly important. How do YOU protect yourself from personal information getting into the wrong hands?
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Esther Miller says
atOne thing I have been careful about in the 30-some years I’ve used computers is my passwords. I used to be able to remember them, can’t any more. So I write them down and stash them. But I never write them in plain language. I use my old ham radio callsign (which is no longer part of the public database) as part or all of several passwords but I identify it as “oc” for “old call”. I know what that old call is…presumably no one else does. For a while, I had to change a password every 6 weeks at work, so I decided to use my daughter’s address (she kept moving and I had trouble remembering her address. I coded it as “k-add” for “Keri’s address”. I kept the list on the back of my desk calendar pad…the first place anybody would probably look. But what they found wasn’t going to help them much.
Facebook makes it easy for us to give away far too much information. They want us to identify our family members, our close friends, our hometowns, where we’ve worked, where we went to school, etc. Many of us women use our maiden names as well as our married names. If some site asks for a mother’s maiden name as security, we have just compromised our children’s security because their mother’s maiden name is out there for everybody to see. My bank, at least, asks what I want to use for security…and I definitely don’t use my mother’s maiden name!
Elizabeth Cottrell says
atEsther, this is SUCH a valuable contribution to the conversation! Your experience and your comments reflect both the importance of being careful with our passwords and the difficulty of doing so! I know others who have developed some kind of code. I use LastPass to track my passwords, and that allows me to use strong passwords, but what happens if something is hacked at LastPass? The truth is, as you have suggested, a list on paper in our office is still safer than anything stored in “the cloud.”
Pamela says
atI think it’s so difficult to be secure (maybe near impossible) that it’s the luck of the drawer whether or not we get hacked. I can either hide myself in my little corner of the world and do nothing, or I can follow security precautions, but then just join the world and keep connecting. Funny, we all have become so much more connected thanks to the internet and computers, and we’ve also become so much more vulnerable by doing so.
Elizabeth H. Cottrell says
atThat irony is such a great observation, Pamela! The wonders of technology have indeed helped to connect us and extend our reach in so many ways, but at what cost?
Barbara Forte Abate says
atHoly cow! Marvelous, immediately thought provoking video. Spooky, scary, and a that’s not all. How true it is that we need to pretty much think and rethink everything we’re tapping out on our keyboards in the name of convenience, communication, and connecting. Ackkkkkk…wonderful innovations gone awry. As an inherently private and careful sort of person, I do MOSTLY watch what I’m putting out there–but it only takes one innocent trusting instant to crack the window and allow the gremlins in. Caution always, yes, and yet there’s still the fact that I am not nearly as wise or conniving as those who make an art out of theft and deceit. Beware indeed!
WOW, Esther! Brilliant!!!! You’ve given me some excellent ideas to step-up my currently lacking security sinkholes 😀
Thanks for a marvelous post, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Cottrell says
atBarbara, you’re right, no matter how careful we are, there is always someone who could be one step ahead of us. I’m not inclined to be an alarmist, but I thought this video was quite compelling. I’m glad you felt the same way.
Karen R. Sanderson says
atI am not sure there is anything I CAN DO. Yes, a lot depends on the security of my bank and so forth. I often wonder about people that are so concerned with their security, but then are on FB all day and post photos and have a blog and a website, etc. If you are that concerned, get the heck off social media! I don’t really worry about it. I mean, I have enough to worry about. If someone if interested enough in my sad bank account of the pics of my artwork or dinner, then have at it.
Elizabeth Cottrell says
atKaren, I appreciate your weighing in with a different perspective. I completely agree we shouldn’t cower and disconnect from the world, because even then there are dangers and threats. I completely agree we should not obsess about it, but a reasonable amount caution seems to me to be reasonable.