So after reading the post, “How I got my digital life back” by, Matt Honan, it made me very nervous about the security of my computer. It is so easy for any hacker to literally just tap into my computer and literally do anything to it. What struck me the most about this article was the lack of security that we truly possess and how much it can disrupt your life. When this hacker decided that this person for whatever reason was the one to hack it happened so swiftly and with ease. What was really scary was he could take on his identity do whatever and have others think it is the original person. Like saying profane things on his twitter and there is nothing you can do about it. When I had a myspace in middle school I found out that I was “sending” strange videos to my friends when I really wasn’t and that idea and lack of security freaked me out so much that I immediately deleted my myspace account.
When the hacker was able to infiltrate his computer system It completely caused his digital life to go into shock. He literally had to go from the ground up and start fresh after being forced to completely shut down his system. However, when he shut them out, he ultimately shut himself out too.
When hackers broke into my iCloud account and wiped my devices, my first assumption was that someone had broken into my local network. So the first thing I did was shut down the internet and turn off all of my other machines. I wanted those assholes out of my house. But that also meant I had no way to send or receive data.
Luckily though, he had the 1password program (which I didn’t know existed until this blog or this class). It allows you to store all of your passwords into one system and to access it all you have to do is to just log in with one password. Luckily Honan was able to retrieve his passwords since they weren’t technically on his computer, but on his 1password program roaming the internet. What was an advantage though that did help him exponentially was that his job is a technology journalist. Which therefore gave him that extra edge in knowing what to do and how to retrieve everything properly. I feel like if this happened to me, I would not know what to do at all. I would just panic and hope that I saved everything on my external hard drive previously. God! And the fact that the hacker even bragged about hacking on Honan’s twitter is just too much. I wouldn’t even be able to truly understand how far they have actually wrecked my computer without talking to an expert first. Luckily, the people at apple were super supportive and helpful (which is refreshing). Another thing that I didn’t know was that it is important to accept microsoft updates when they are provided because it is harder to warn off hackers when the system is up to date and accounted for as well.
Luckily though, all in all Honan was able to regain his digital life, which I realize now is actually more vital to function than I realized. Let’s just hope that some random hacker won’t tap into my system the way Phobia did for him. Luckily though I don’t exactly have anything on my computer that is so important that it needs to be hacked, but who knows.