I sincerely appreciate your words, Brian. You're always watching out for me. Thank you, bro.
But I'm actually trying to make my world smaller, simpler. And I'm working hard at that. It was far too vast for way too long.
I'm with you there, I would absolutely love to take my house, life and, virtually everything else and go for Zen Simplicity...but Mrs Wu and my employer are not on board with that...just yet
As for banking on your computer, I worked in the banking industry for a long time. If people knew what I know, they wouldn't do any banking on line at all. Ever.
Don't work in a bank, never have, but being in IT security I think I might know what you know and a bit more as it applies to IT security...but hat is all I will ever claim that I might know more than you about..... I world never make such claim about anything else...well ok.... maybe Taijiquan and Chinese stuff...but other than that nope. And for the record I do not do online banking. Based on what I know, it scares the living daylights out of me.
As for Facebook - I've worked with people from every conceivable letter agency, some of which most people probably never heard of. Like OIRA, NGA, OCC, CFPB and my particular favorite, because I was part of it, the OFR. [look em up, I'm just home from work, I'm having a beer) They love Facebook! Because people love to say anything and everything on Facebook. It's like Christmas for the people I know. Everything you wanted to look at all in one convenient place. And, dude, Facebook is less secure than Donald Trump's hair.
Face book is a treasure trove for Identity thieves, robbers and various other ne'er-do-wells. However I have been on it (but not regularly), set up sites on it, there are ways to make it more secure...and there should always be this little voice screaming in the back of your head saying "SHUT UP STUPID" every time you post something there. If for no other reason than to make you think before you post. But with that said, I did have one of my pages, that was set up for testing purposes, hijacked. It was my fault for making the password so simple that a Brute force attack likely figured it out. I did regain control of the site, made the password a paragraph long of real stuff mixed with nonsense and then closed the site.
Also watched my home PC get hacked and taken over once, for me it was cool to watch, I had nothing on it of value, and I just unplugged it from the network, reformat, repartition, it and reinstalled everything.... I was watching it get hit from Korea and Central America...not sure which attack got it, but it was cool to watch...knew they had it when my mouse cursor started to move by itself. You know what the first thing they did was? They used my negligence against me, I forgot to password protect my security system and the attacker password protected me out of it. To me it was cool, but most I told about this at the time were horrified.
And as for this that you said....
You can find a way to use the internet and the world that ours is becoming and still protect yourself, should you choose to.
No, Brian, you really can't. Honest to God. From most people, sure. Not from the people I used to work with. Not in a million years. So......I'm just going to roll along and make my world a little smaller each and every year. But, thanks, bro.
Well, you can protect yourself, just like with martial arts, but , like martial arts, it does not make you invincible. You make It harder for the black hats to get you, that is all. For the average online user; security software (including a firewall), at least 2 different vendors, Avoid free security software (IMO) it is free so the black hats have it and already know how to break it. Hard passwords that are AT LEAST 8 characters long with letters, numbers and special characters. Do not open e-mail form anyone you don't know and even if it is from someone you know make sure the subject makes since before you blindly open it and start clicking links. Don't give out personal info on line and if you are filling out a form ask yourself; "Why do they need this information". There is no reason for a vendor to have your social security number and if they are asking for it...why?
But with that said, do you use a credit card: they put skimmers on gas station pumps and ATMs that take your info, you give it to waiters/waitresses who take it (and at times have been caught stealing the info), Ever have someone stranding to close at the ATM or anywhere else you have your card out? Heck there was a major Corporate hack/theft because they discovered that a network admin on a train was called about an issue (and it was a legitimate call and issue) that felt it necessary to give out their user name and password to the person on the phone so they could fix the issue. The person in the seat behind her was writing this all down and used it later to gain access to the company. Do you know how many phone, numbers, addresses and SS# I could have if I were one of the bad guys, just by being near by when people freely gave out that information. I also cannot tell you how many times I have told stores that I was not going to give them my SS# since I saw no reason that they should have it.
Also just to add to the fear, never EVER store private things in the cloud. You have no idea who is in it with you, or who else has access to it. Don't believe me, look at all the Hollywood types that had rather risqué photos take from their cloud account and either used to blackmail them of find them posted on the internet.
Basically I can scare the heck out of you with more if you want, (I could tell you about my enterprise level run in with ransom-ware) but the idea of this was not so much to get you to download if you don't want to, but to make the point that it simply is not safe anywhere these days, so protect yourself. You can choose to do that by not doing any of it, and that is a viable plan, unless you are depriving yourself and you wish you didn't have to. Or you can take steps, like we do (us crazy martial arts types) to protect yourself and do what you want to. But, like in marital arts and the real world, there are simply places online you should not go and things you should not do..... because you are simply asking for trouble
