Hacked!

It finally happened.  My longstanding email address on Yahoo, that I've used for aver 14 years now was hacked into yesterday.  They sent spam to everyone in my contact list, including several yahoo groups that I haven't been very active on for several years now.  There is no foolproof way to get around these buggers.  Although I am more careful than most and don't open suspicious emails from folks/places I don't know, emails with no subject line and most forwarded emails, they still snuck in somehow.  I hate this feeling of being violated, and I hate that the people I know are now subject to junk sent in my name.

There was only one thing to do... change my email account.  I am being very careful of putting the new email account out there as that just invites hackers to have free access again, but those who really need to contact me can always find me, either from Facebook or some of the other groups and lists and boards that I frequent, and in those places, they can actually contact me without having to have my email address.  I am no longer using the old account for anything, and did not forward my contact list or anything else to this new email address so that the new account is far more difficult for the hackers to get to quite so readily.  Yes, it's a hassle, but in the interest of being safe, it's worth it to me.

Unfortunately, this is a case of the information age gone amok.  We are technologically further along than we have laws in place to govern, and given the current world political climate, it is very unlikely that anything can be done to stop these idiots.  Back in the Dark Ages (as my brother used to say, 'when dinosaurs chased us home'), there wasn't the Information Highway.  Computers were monstrous things that took up whole city blocks, just to do simple math problems, and the concept of a personal computer was something left to Science Fiction writers.  One didn't need a Social Security number until one reached an age when employment was possible, and Identity Theft, although possible, was a rare thing that you hardly ever heard of, let alone experienced.

Sometimes I still long for those simpler days, full of activities that didn't require being plugged in and connected.  Those days are gone now, for the most part, and while I still do some of those far less technical activities, even those activities, like my knitting, are enhanced by access to the Internet.  Without the Internet, we would have far less access to interesting patterns and such a wide range of yarn suppliers.  Without the Internet, we would have less access to others who enjoy the same pastimes.  Without the Internet, our lives might be safer, but they would also be missing something that we have acquired a taste for... information.