Are you feeling secure?

On August 14, barely a week ago, my posting "Freedom of

Pn45

Privacy" about MyLife.com in the U.S.A. observed "what is happening in the U.S. could come here. If it is not already here."

A letter in this week's NZ Listener (a journal I highly recommend. It costs  $3.00 a week if you take out a year's sub.) had several letters on Julian Assange, which concerned freedom of speech, and a very disturbing one under the heading "Feeling Insecure" in which Mary Anna Smith of Auckland had this to say on online security:

"...I remembered something I'd done three days earlier. A letter had come from the Auckland District Health Board asking me for proof of residency for a consultation I had coming up. I went for the quickest option -- I scanned my passport and sent it in an email. Now my identity is in plain sight through one of the easiest-to-corrupt forms of messaging.

"As fate would have it, that morning a friend called to warn me that my Facebook account had been copied and a fake me was sending messages to all my contacts, many of whom had already replied and compromised themselves.

"This is no time to be complacent. The words of Hillel have never been more apt: If not now, when?"

Big Brothers could be watching us all, some for commercial gain, others for personal or political gain. Did you know you can buy internet spying software on line, incredible though it may seem.
ACW.