Dependence

My e-mail server has been hacked recently, meaning that somebody has been sending e-mails appearing to come from me to many of the people in my e-mail address book.

No particular harm has come to me, and the worst that seems to have happened to anyone that has opened one of the e-mails purporting to come from me and clicking on the link inside has been making themselves the possible victim of an e-mail virus.

On balance, I suppose a great many worse things could happen to anybody, and since I use a Macintosh computer, I don't seem to have suffered from any virus intrusion into my computer. I have checked carefully, much more carefully than perhaps I have done before.

And I suppose it has been a wake-up call to make me find some kind of software that will check for viruses on my own computer, about which perhaps I had been too complacent in the past.

It has taken me a while to suddenly realize what has potentially happened, which is likely that somebody has discovered the password that gives me access to my online e-mail account, and is being able to send e-mails as if they have originated from myself.

I haven't lost anything, although perhaps some of my friends may have experienced more problems than I have, by virtue of the simple fact of running a PC as opposed to a Macintosh.

What I have recently done is to strengthen the nature of my password access to my e-mail account, and hopefully this will make future access for whomsoever has done this less easy.

The e-mails that have been sent in my name might have done some damage to my reputation, as they give the impression that I have just recovered from bankruptcy, and offer the opportunity to share in my good fortune by discovering the same get rich quick scheme that I have.

All of this of course is totally bogus, and I suppose whatever the virus will achieve for anyone not protected by appropriate virus protection software may be far worse than anything I have suffered.

But certainly, what has happened in my case, is that I have become far more wary about my use of this technology. And of course I am reminded that there are people that will go to extraordinary ends in the search for probably financial gain.

It is a reminder, long overdue in my case, that we can take nothing for granted in our use of a technology that is as useful as we make it. And as dangerous as we allow it to be.

I am hopeful that anyone that knows me will have seen that these spurious e-mails are totally out of character for me, and will have seen them for what they were, and not gone any further than simply opening them, which seems to have been harmless.

How I have suffered, rather invisibly, is in the confidence that I have previously placed in my computer, which has been totally shaken.

Let's hope that nothing worse than this transpires, and that I can rebuild that confidence, over time, since what a computer gives me over everything else is a means of keeping in touch with the world. As a severely disabled person, this is important to me perhaps more than for many.

I shall certainly be more careful in future, and be far more cautious in setting passwords that enable me to access the things that I take for granted.