ONLINE PRIVACY

ONLINE PRIVACY

Social media has taken the world by storm and has provided the powers that be, the ideal way to hack you and me.  Adult dating sites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube, Google+, Meetup, Disqus, Medium, Renren, Pinterest, Instagram, Secret, Vine, WhatsApp, Flickr, Qzone, VK, Tumblr, and the rest of the social media slice of the Internet can be equated to a  global collection of profiles, admissions, personal ledgers, or even diaries. It constitutes the largest collection of volunteered personal information ever and the greatest incentive to would be hackers to mark you. In days gone by, personal ledgers were kept by many in which to tabulate their thoughts, record their ideas and purposefully expose their fears to a book. A  book that played the role of a non-human psychologist, if you like.  It merely acted as a wall to bounce ideas off, tell your secrets to, share you deepest thoughts, reveal you innermost desires, even talk to if needs be, though never expecting a reply. 

Personal diaries and personal ledgers helped many people to retain their sanity and deal with their demons, but as personal ledgers slowly died out, it was replaced by the psychologist and his couch. For many a "would be patient", bouncing the mental anguish off a quack was often a futile and expensive exercise, whereas for many a physiologist, a very lucrative money spinner. The more people who thought they needed the help of a psychologist, the more psychologist brain washed them into using their services. 

I don't deny nor dispute that there is a need for psychologist in society, but they tend to diagnose everyone with  some sort of schizophrenia or the other. Prescribing the same regimen of drugs to everyone from Retalin, to Adderall, to Concerta, to Vyvanse, to Imipramine, to Inderal, to Invega Sustenna, to Ambien, to Celexa, to Prozac, to Thorazine, to Valium, to Zoloft, to mention but a few, even  though we all have a biochemical individuality, in fact and absolutely  unique biochemical individuality.

Some parents even felt the need to send their children to psychologist for evaluation who then became regular couch subjects. This turned out to be an ingenious cash cow model that kept psychologist near the top of the food chain for some time and also kept the masses sedated and conditioned to be perfect zombies. But the psychologist are being phased out by the social media networks, where the masses are comparing notes,  with fake  friend discussing their personal issues, their mental issues, their health issues, their psychological issues, etc...  entrusting their deepest and darkest secrets to strangers, and others soliciting commentaries who are as effed-up. Besides bolstering their own achievements and lying through their teeth about it, exposing themselves, divulging personal data and volunteering way too much information about themselves. So much so, that the bullshit on the social media networks is fast replacing the bullshit that their patients construed as insight. 

As if it's not bad enough that everyone out there have their own share of problems, be they chicks with daddy issues, or guys with mommy issues, sex addictions, drug dependencies, need for acceptance, dependency syndrome, peddling drugs, kleptomania, alcoholism, prostitution, bullying, theft, lies, cheating wives and sugar daddies, etc. The NSA and the FBI are also added to this mix. Yes, the NSA has been pushing for cooperation from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to feed them with profiles of "misfits", suspect offenders, pedophiles, etc... This means that you and I and everyone else we know, are being poured though a sieve, being judged for what we say or do online, for what we buy and sell online, and the websites that we visit. 

Google is god of the internet and stores all your search history and I'm not talking about your browser history that is stored on your computer which can easily be erased or configured by selecting the paranoid tick in your control panel  Control panel \ Internet Properties \ General \ browser history \ settings \ history \ 0 days. Here I'm referring to your Web & App Activity that may go back several years and can by found in the settings menu in the bottom right hand side of Google's search page. Why you may ask, why does Google do this?  Because governments compelled them to do so. Google and Yahoo have maps on their sites that you can visit to see how many of your fellow countrymen or women is in the NSA's spotlight, all thanks to social networks.

The Tor browser is an option  if you feel that its best to surf anonymously but the FBI is trying their utmost to get the profiles of people who surf anonymously and wish to enjoy some privacy. There are rumours that the FBI hackers are too lame to do it themselves, so they agreed to pay Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, $1 million to hack the Tor network and deanonymize its users.  So who’s hacking who? However, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)  is doing their level best to get court injections against the FBI and the NSA's abuse of power and save us all from becoming suspects or victimized for what we say online..  



Meanwhile, a type of malware known as ransomware has been restricting users from accessing their own website or computer system by uploading the above notice, locked by the FBI or Justice Department on their systems. It forces   "offenders" to pay a ransom / fine in Bitcoins via specified online methods before they can  get your own systems or data back. The hacker known as Slavik  who also wrote the Zeus banking trojan, is responsible for the   CryptoLocker Ransomware Virus and has been using the FBI  to extort money from victims.