Opinion : The dangers of a digital world

By George did it rain Thursday at midday, indeed my lunchtime walk around the town centre had be be curtailed due to the inclement weather.

Once again a Bank Holiday Weekend is upon us and the weather seems to have taken a definite turn for the worse.

However the weather is the last thing on my mind at the moment. More worrying is the recent news that a leading internet auction site fell victim some rascals who managed to do a take-it-now on the sensitive user data of hundreds of millions of the sites users exposing them to identity theft.

Sadly my good self was a user so naturally I assume that my details were also taken, so far I haven’t been told for sure. No doubt someone, somewhere, is taking on my identity at this very moment.

It just goes to show how fragile the newfangled world of the interweb is. One slip and the personal information of millions of people is just gone in a puff.

Now I hear the site in question is planning to introduce mandatory password change for every user when the log in next time.

I many not be technical but surely this is a futile effort as the hackers will already know the necessary information associated with the accounts and can simply log in using a stolen user name and change the password themselves before the real user can do so?

I fear there is too much reliance on common information for so called ‘security questions’ like peoples mothers maiden names or the name of someone’s first school. It only takes one site to be hacked and reveal information then accounts on other sites relating to the same person that ask similar security questions can easily be taken over.

Personally yours truly feels that every user who had their details taken should be compensated for our information falling into the wrong hands.

Sadly once address information is revealed, which seems to have happened in the case of the auction site, then the hackers can even pinpoint where people live and literally come round and knock on their front door.

How did we create such an unsafe world? If only the shops in Wycombe sold everything that I want then my good self would never have created the account on the auction site in the first place.

The digital world is full of danger and it seems nothing is safe. If this is the modern world then count me out. Things were much better in the past indeed we never had problems like this in the 1970’s.

In future yours truly will shop safely and use the retailers in Wycombe town centre. They may not have as much choice but at least my personal details will be safe.

What do you think?

*Don’t forget my blogs are published here twice a week every Tuesday and Friday evenings around 8pm.