Last night it came to my attention that someone has been spamming on MySpace under my name. While this is annoying, and I'm not 100% sure how it happened, it's not that bothersome because it doesn't hurt me so much to cancel my MySpace account. (Which I've done, so if I disappear from your friends lists and whatnot, you'll know why. I'm not sure if I'm coming back, either.) But it scared me, because if someone can get ahold of my information that easily--my email address and password--they could literally start making things unpleasant. I've got pretty secure passwords, I know, and I use different ones for all the different online things I use--Amazon, Typepad, my bank, Gmail--but still. It scares me to think that it's that freaking easy to get information.
I even had a moment of panic this morning where I just assumed EVERYTHING had been compromised. Passwords and screen names were changed, and I wondered even if my work computer is not completely vulnerable. But I have virus checkers, and spyware and adware scanners, and I ran scans, and everything seems okay. I'm pretty sure I'll go through another round of changing things when I get home from work, just to be completely safe, and I know that seems extreme, but with this sort of problem, you can't be too careful.
I'm in sort of a technology downswing right now, where it seems more of a nuisance than a help. (Hence my silence with the blog.) I got a new computer for my birthday--a gorgeous Macbook--that I really like, but I also seem to use it less than my Powerbook. I know that's partly because I spend 8 hours a day trying ot amuse myself (at work) in front of a computer, and I'm just plain sick of it by the time I get home. But I also know that I'm just sick of it in general. I'm sick of feeling always plugged in, and always connected. I like being able to email people, and I like reading blogs and blogging. But I don't much care for the social networking crap, and even though I'm a confirmed internet shopaholic, I'm even getting sick of that. It's cheaper; I know I get more books for my money from Amazon. But I'm tending towards Luddite right now, and when it comes down to it, there's no real reason.
Like I said in the title, all the technology feels oppressive. It just feels like too much to put up with right now. It's 100% unreasonable, and based on what really amounts to nothing, but nevertheless, it's there. I'm pretty sure that part of the problem is the suddenness of my immersion in the tech stuff--for years and years, I was pretty much not interested. Oh, sure, I played games on the family's computers, and I had a hand-me-down laptop that got me through college. I had a nice shiny walkman, and my house always had the latest in home electronics. But I was very uninterested in it. I'm sure I wouldn't have known about the iPod when I did; I only knew about it because of S. And don't get me wrong, I love my iPod. I love my Mac. I love the technology that makes it possible for me to download audiobooks and listen to them in my car. I love keeping an online journal (in the form of a blog). I even love shopping online.
But I hate all the shit that comes with it. It's a pain in the ass, and from where I'm sitting, it doesn't seem worth it right now. I'm sick of passwords, and security questions. I'm sick of the spam, and the fake emails purporting to be from my bank, or my non-existent paypal account. I'd like to take a weekend trip with S where neither of us brings a computer, or looks for an internet connection. I'd like to turn off my cell phone and cut up my debit card and just not deal with it. But I can tell you right now, none of those things will happen. I'm not sure how S would even respond the idea of going without Internet. (Okay, we did live without internet in Disneyworld. Though he did bring his computer and work on photos. Not sure if that quite meets my requirements.) Oh well.
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