© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 134
Strange people are trying to take over my computer for their own nefarious purposes. Some of them come from South America and others from Asia and Eastern Europe. In an attempt to keep my computer safe, I have about seven passwords, some of which I can remember, and a programme which makes my computer so secure that the only website I can access is the one which tells me my computer can’t find the page I am looking for and I should reconfigure my firewall.
Welcome to the worldwide web. No, I’m not a head case, just paranoid with good reason. According to a recent experiment conducted by a well known computer magazine, a computer such as their experimental machine, with no protection, a heavily trafficked IP address and open to the internet, will last about two hours before it falls over due to the weight of hackers, viruses and compromised e-mail software sending tens of thousands of spams on whatever e-mail address the owner of the computer uses.
Fortunately I’m not yet a major target, for instance a very popular computer magazine. The last time I went without anti-virus, sometime in 2004, it took all of two days, which was enough time to get the protection in place. Not bad, but not pretty either.
The results of a recent public CNN poll placed the worldwide web as the greatest technological wonder of the modern world, ahead of the CERN particle accelerator, which is the largest piece of machinery on earth. And the web deserves its status. It connects more people than even the strange, current fascination with Paris Hilton. I know this for a fact, because there are some people do not use the web to surf for Paris Hilton, hence there must be more on the web than Paris Hilton, so the web must be bigger than Paris Hilton.
On the other hand, even though I can connect with virtually anyone, virtually anyone can connect with me and, the moment I drop my guard, hijack my e-mail address and use it to send out e-mails with Paris Hilton news headlines in the subject line and offers for dodgy stocks and cheap pharmaceuticals in the body of the mail.
Unfortunately my firewall is so secure that it even blocks attempts to update my anti-virus software. I suppose I should read the manual, but it is one of those that assumes that the user has a degree in nuclear physics and doesn’t need a step-1-step-2 list of instructions.
Even if I did manage to get the firewall working properly, it wouldn’t change much. Consider this… the Pentagon, with groups of zealous soldiers prepared to do battle a world away at a moment’s notice, has to maintain crack teams of computer boffins to keep their computers safe. And even so, stories about their failures still appear in the news from time to time.
The only really effective way around the problem is not to own a computer or never to use the internet. There are tribes in the farther reaches of the Amazon who don’t know about computers, and they seem fairly happy although they probably have a mild curiosity about who Paris Hilton is.
Perhaps we could go back to using bits of paper, but then those tribes in the Amazon would probably not be so happy as we cut down their trees to make memo pads. And everything would slow down to the speed of 1970 again. On second thoughts, a return to paper is probably not such a great idea. It looks like I am going to have to read that manual after all.
So, alongside all the wonderful changes that the internet is bringing and absolute clarity about every aspect of Paris Hilton’s life and doings, including what she looks like without clothes, the world wide web is bringing to our lives the aspect of global paranoia about hacked and hijacked computers.
Fundamentalist Islam is fighting to spread the message of the prophet. Fundamentalist Christianity is fighting to spread the word of Jesus. And a bunch of hackers are fighting, or at least hacking, to spread the word of cheap Viagra and shares in companies that really don’t interest me. Perhaps global warming is the easy way out.
