H4CK3D

This morning I awoke to a true 21st century nightmare—my email account security had been ‘compromised’ (you can thank the military for that euphemism) and my good e-name had been soiled in order to sell some sort of working-from-home scam. Slightly shaken, I duly changed my passwords and performed a virus scan on my computer, which made me feel like a character in a Tom Cruise technothriller.

Just as late 19th century Britons had a vague sense of unease over what seemed to them an inevitable invasion from Germany, so too do I have an underlying anxiety of the consequences if my online world were to be breached. Unfortunately the British unease resulted in wonderful literature like H.G Wells’ War of the Worlds; the best you’ll get from me is a blog post in 12pt Verdana.

I actually don’t particularly like using the word ‘hack’ in this case, as it seems too violent for what happened. As far as I can tell no bank or other sensitive details were obtained. For me, true ‘hacking’ is when somebody changes all your passwords so you can’t login (bad), drains your bank account (worse) and likes and comments on hundreds of Facebook photos of people you barely know (tragic). But I can't really think (or be bothered to think) of such an efficient way of describing what happened and so you can safely assume that every appearance of ‘hack’ within this post—including the title—was forced upon me against my will by the Laziness Fairy that lives on my shoulder. 

Although I escaped with relatively little ‘real’ damage, the spam was rather embarrassingly sent out to my parents, close friends, bosses and real estate agent. It would therefore appear the hacking program had some sort of algorithm that selected frequently used email addresses; but it also obscurely chose people I’ve either emailed once or have not spoken to in years. So apologies to the membership department at the Melbourne Football Club, and also to Victorian Legislative Council member Greg Barber (I can’t even remember what I emailed him about—something filled with pent-up second year university rage, no doubt).

In any case, the level of embarrassment was about the same as walking around for half a day with spinach stuck between your teeth. Some people obviously notice and don’t say anything, yet others are kind enough to quietly pull you aside and hand you a toothpick. Certainly not mortifying, but it’s not really the kind of attention you want to draw to yourself. Thankfully for all concerned the spam was an offer to increase your income and not your genitalia.

Although the only thing that was truly hurt was my ego, there is still a sense of unease about being hacked. It’s forced me to re-evaluate all the information I have floating around out there, and come to terms with the idea that anybody determined enough could probably get to it. One of the main issues we now deal with is our complacency with the online security. This is especially true for members of my generation, who grew up alongside the development of the internet, and quite often made choices as teenagers about email and social networking accounts that still affect our adult lives. Even as adults, do many of us take our security all that seriously? I would guess not. I know many people who use the same password across multiple accounts, including the same password for their social media as for their banking.

The reality is that for a few days (weeks if I’m lucky) I’ll have a heightened sense of my online security, and be more careful about where and when I access personal information. I’m careful to a certain extent anyway, but I do worry that before long I’ll slip back into complacency and possibly leave myself open for somebody to do some real damage. As with any break in—online or otherwise—the worst feeling is that somebody I don’t know went through my stuff. I can’t decide whether the fact that in this case it was probably a computer makes that notion more terrifying or not. Alongside my general anxiety of my personal information being compromised, I am resigned to the fact that humanity is destined to meet its ultimate fate at the hands of machines. I’m self-important enough to be worried that hacking my Hotmail account is Phase One of their sinister plan.