gee whiz it went right over my pretty head
It’s the cast of Hackers! 1995.
I am lucky in my current living situation. I not only do not pay any utilities, but there is free wifi for the building, which so far has been reliable.
After the past few weeks something eventually went clik in my head. I became very aware that I was on a shared network with dozens of strangers. My phone, my computer, my iPad. Blithely typing in my credit card numbers, logging into my bank accounts, pushing a lot of information to the cloud. Not to mention that our router’s name and password is pretty dumbed down. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of teen Hackers (1990s movie style) nor much techno soundtrack to crack the codes.
I’ve been victim to identity theft several times (even pre-internet!) but the cases always seemed to trace to appropriation of my cards or some such where getting new account numbers and changing passwords seemed to plug the leak.
You’d THINK since I’m an early adopter/technologically savvy lady that internet safety would have been a much higher priority than it has been. My friend Rebecca can remember me lecturing her on the importance on backing up data on Bernoulli drives way back in the early 90s. Maybe with a different techno track. Do it, you know you want to click play.
So finally I found myself, after lots of reading with furrowed brow, finally understanding what a virtual private network (VPN) is. Go ahead, wiki it, I’ll wait (read only the first bits, your brain will melt with too much nerdery farther down). I always had a vague notion about VPN being a way workers could access their intranet, but bottom line, it can also serve as a way for ordinary folk to protect their online identity. It’s all about proxy, yo! Someone using a VPN is assured that all the info you’re sending and receiving is encrypted and safe from evil prying eyes, you read me?
Read this, too: VPNs: What They Do, How They Work, and Why You’re Dumb for Not Using One. After reading several shame-inducing articles like that one and making some service comparisons, I found a likely-looking company through this helpful Lifehacker article. Then I gave them 30 bucks for a year of service, installed some stuff and boom, now I am a HELL of a lot more secure online than I was before.
NOW COMES A RANT
I may be WAY off base, but there’s something wrong with this whole picture. Why didn’t I know how easy it was to protect my identity? Possibly partly because I’m not sunk fully into the geek culture and only touch upon the more readable blogs here and there. And maybe partly because I’m a female, maybe?
I read a lot and it’s mostly for entertainment. What reading I do for work tends to be more non-profit and local news stuff and less tech news. Obviously I read a lot of home design and craft blogs — areas that are traditionally (and erroneously) perceived as “female” pursuits. So, if I’m looking at something like Real Simple, and if there is an article about online security, it would be totally non-tech softball advice along the lines of “hide your fingers when you punch in your pin” or “do some research about the online stores you use” or “consider going back to basics” (whatever the eff that means). There’s not a lot of useful stuff like “why https is good” and “hey you, use a VPN” — even though this stuff is not hard to understand, it is NOT. Perceived difficulty is not an excuse to keep people, women, old people, whoever, from knowing this stuff.
I’m sure I’ve commented upon/ranted about the scary width of the technological playing field. I see it all the time; friends with $250/month cell phone bills who don’t understand the basics about using wireless vs. cell network; colleagues who are trying to make do with a donated, decade old laptop; young people who give not one shit about their online persona and the impact it will have in their college-going, job-seeking futures. Not to mention vast swathes of people who do not have the economic ability to consume technology.
I am not calling anybody dumb. It is very easy to be kept in the dark and misled about a vast spectrum of issues in our day and age. Perhaps instead of this issue being about sexism, it’s more about indifference to — and hostility towards — anyone trying to protect or better themselves, to save money, to get more aware.
Am I on the right track here? If so, what the hell do we do about it?
This is the butt-kick I needed. Thank you.
Yes, I will forever be impressed by your Bernouli drive…. 😉 And No, I never really thought about why I might want to set up a personal VPN either. Can I knit one?