Invasion of Privacy

I am so angry today.  There are no words that can express how frustrated I am; but first, I will tell you why.  Late last night, I jumped online here to check my mail before going to bed.  I don't normally do it if I'm feeling tired - which I was - but I decided to and was very thankful I did; as my Hotmail account was hacked!

At first, I didn't think anything of it.  Then, I quickly unhooked myself from the net for about a minute or so, then jumped back on, but it was too late, they had my details.  So, I deleted the returned mail and got rid of them out of my junkmail box and advised my friends on Facebook.  In reply, one of them advised me to change my password on my Hotmail account or I'd lose the lot!  So, I did... and I made it harder to hack too by taking better precautions.  

Now, I'm the most cautious person in the world when it comes to the internet.  I have an excellent anti-virus system installed on my computer (which updates daily).  I don't interrupt updates of anything that's supposed to update; and I make sure my Firefox Browser is the most current so I can keep up with everything.  However, I find it completely irresponsible of people who have studied hard and gotten themselves an IT degree to go and hack others.  Or better still, there's people out there who haven't and they're just naturally brilliant at computers and have found their ways around computers and have become hackers.  This makes them the most awful people around.

I dated a programmer once who once showed me how he could easily hack into a chatroom and use my account with a few simple keystrokes.  And once he showed me, he thought it would be funny to do it all the time; just to tease me.  So, if he could do that - as a programmer who's qualified - I'm wondering who the hell's out there hacking into our Facebook accounts (which happened to me not 6 months into owning a FB account; and I had to change my password).  Now, they've found their way into my Hotmail account.  

This invasion of privacy is becoming worse with each passing year.  If it's not Big Brother looking over our shoulders, it's the hackers who are stealing our identities as they pose as our banking and ISP's.  I, for one, am sick of it.  I'm a law-abiding Australian who was born here, educated here and lives here.  I have never tried to steal anyone's identity or even want to try; so why would somebody want to steal mine?  Only a low-life little grott would want to steal anything as low as somebody's identity; forcing that very person to start over again.

So, if you've found something really weird going on with any of your accounts online, call up your ISP and find out if you're supposed to receive anything like you're getting.  And if you're not, don't open it, delete it immediately and get rid of it out of your junkmail box so whoever hacked you can't get to you again... then, change your password!  The last thing you need is to have to start over your e-mail addressing issues again with all of your friends and contacts.