Internet - Convenient for You or the Provider of Your Services?

Feeling the creeps from being snooped upon.

Facing the consequences of being a victim of intentional stealing of our data.

Realising that we can have disadvantages suffering a personal invasion of our privacy.

Knowing that hacking has occurred of our financial and health records.

Being tracked of our private movements, and then being taken advantage of with such unauthorised tracking.

Having our unique human identity stolen and then misused by fraudulent behaving people.

These are just some of the rising nature of ways in which we can be potentially robbed, invaded and have our inner selves gutted.

WE are now advised to:

Clear the cookies we incur when ever we use any electronic equipment that has been connected to the cyberspace.   If you do this regularly, it is like regularly changing the locks to your physical property  - it takes patience and determination, but cna be ingrained as part of the routine of life.

Purchase and download authentication apps  - these are available or utilised from software developed by Google and Duo Security.  To me, that sounds like further depending on software companies....

Place a security code on our mobile phones. 

Physically tape off our webcam hole in our desktops and other related equipment.   This old fashioned measure perhaps is the cheapest move an individual can make to fight back.

Avoid publicly accessible Wi-Fi, like in hotels, shopping centres and institutions.  This means you only connect to the Big Universe of Cyberspace through your own known and hopefully secure arrangements.

Be disciplined to use health, financial and property related transactions through only one specified piece of equipment that you have secured well in this big and bad world.

Give up the convenience of connecting your household equipment to the internet - like home security, refrigerators, audio and visual entertainment pieces, solar panel operations and vehicle enablers.

Go shopping and invest in a bug scanner - another gadget to buy!!!   Fun, exciting and mysterious to use, especially in a hotel room, or whenever you have this irritating intuitive feel that you are being monitored, measured and watched.

Never reveal our eyes in digital transmission or social media - always wear shades in photographs, you never know how your eye retinas are going to be digitally measured and stolen.

Always use cash and never a digital means of payment - that means no pay wave on your mob phone or credit card, spend what you already have and have a coin pocket....until the day governments ban the use of currency and cash.

It is now easier for others to rob us behind the scenes in the digital world than for them to confront us face to face or in the physical perspective.

It used to be that fraudsters had to interact with their intended victims face to face, utilising all the tricks of a snake oil salesperson.  These days, in line with the rising impersonal nature of commercial transactions, delivery of services and mindset of human interaction, frauds, corruption and misdemeanours occur through the click of a button, a touch of an LED screen and an electronic exchange across the world.

The experience of being taken advantage of can be a remote and soul destroying experience.

And yet with every month passing into the 21st century, millions of individuals are willingly or forcibly made to adapt to faceless transactions, heartless exchanges and robotic encounters.   It may start as simply innocent as having your utility company make you get only on-line bills.  It can be as big as having the necessary information in life only made accessible through a screen.

Do look around your abode.  How many things do you observe that enable this digital, faceless and cyberspace intruder have access to your privacy?  Do you reflect how much you had to dish up of your hard earned post tax money to get them?   Do you have a terrifying smile then, when you realise that you and your family members are pressured often on an average of every two years to change to a better model of such equipment?  

Providers of services and goods inevitably move us to be more vulnerable to these heightened risks, for various reasons.  One big reason is their containment of costs for the business and the corresponding increase in profitability for their owners, shareholders or management rewards.   for users and consumers, it may be increased convenience....but at what cost?