The TV news programs today are making a big fuss about this story, as if it hasn't been going on for ages already. Spying and counter-spying is definitely 'old news' in cyberspace. After all, surely you don't think the Internet was invented just so we could exchange photos and enjoy the latest smut from the San Pornando Valley, do you? You aren't that gullible, are you?
If you look closely at the activities of some of our more sophisticated internet security programs such as the ones we can buy to protect our home computers, you'll likely discover that the newer ones especially are able to both send and receive packets of information back and forth between your computer and their own 'home base' - or what we hope is their own 'home base' - for the purpose of (they say) verifying the integrity of the signals and data being sent to and from your computer to others elsewhere while you're using it.
Let's assume for a moment that I'm the paranoid type - and just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean the world isn't out to get you - and let's say I can't explain or even read the contents of all those 'security program transmissions and receivings' - those thousands or even millions of bytes of whatever being exchanged by your fancy security program with its own counterpart someplace else, such as home base. How the hell do I know that all that activity isn't some fancy and carefully-crafted program for spying into all my files and reporting back to headquarters everything that's on my machine, and everything I'm doing with it? The plain answer to that is: I don't. I haven't a clue. The people who sold me the security program could be as honest and trustworthy as the day is long, or they could be a bunch of lying bastards.
And I can't prove one way or the other which is which, because I don't have the expertise to do that by myself, nor the money to hire someone else who could do it for me. Most of us, perhaps, are in that same boat. We have to take their word for it, and hope for the best. And guess what, Folks? HERE'S a site where they will sell you a program that lets you be the spy on anyone else who uses your machine or one you have placed this program on. And this has been around for a long time - it isn't something new. So this kind of thing, like I said, is Old News.
I also don't trust the whole bunch of firms offering security programmes like firewalls and anti-virus. They live on internet fraud and spying. So if their would be no spying and hacking (temporarily) would they send their own malware into the net, just to make their customers believe that "someting's going on" and "we're protecting you"?
ReplyDeleteI think the only way to protect your own machine is to become a real expert yourself, know your HD in and out, and be your own sentinel, applying your self-written protection programmes