These days, everybody is online. And because we are all online, the online world has grown to the point where one can find literally anything and everything there. And because of all of these wonderful offerings, it is all too easy to become complacent. After all, you can literally buy people’s souls (or so ebay lore says). You can gamble online (no free drinks, but no weird smells either), and you can work online and make decent money at it. And you can back up your entire hard drive to some distant server which would be accessible should anything short of the apocalypse happen. So why not just trust this “cloud” we’ve built for everything in our lives?
For one thing, the cloud is more dangerous than walking down the street at midnight in any city in the world. While it’s unlikely that anybody would beat you up over the Internet, they can actually do worse. If a cracker (the official term for the types of hackers who use their skills to hurt people) gets access to your information, you could find yourself battling for years to get your life back under your control. When someone takes out loans and credit cards in your name, getting your information back under control is just the first step in a lengthy battle to own your own life, once again.
And that’s not the only potential problem. Anything you say online can be used against you, if anybody feels like doing so. If you have a job, you had best pretend that your boss is standing right over your shoulder whenever you say something online, if there is any way that you can be associated with the statements you make. The first time you say something your company considers vulgar, unprofessional or in any way negatively representative of it, you’re out like last week’s garbage. Far too many people have been fired, just for speaking their minds online.
