Data theft
What is data theft? It is where people steal data. But data itself isn’t that interesting. What’s interesting is what you can do with it.
You can steal their money. Pretend you’re them. Ruin their lives. Extort money from them. Get someone else to murder them. Sell them things. Destroy people. But rarely is data theft the start of making someone successful or honoured or upstanding or respected.
When I considered starting a blog, data theft was something I had to take on board. For my self-preservation, survival and safety.
Why?
Why can I not stand in a public place, even on the Internet, and proclaim “This is who I am, and nothing you throw at me will change that. All you can change in me is whether I live in this life, or in the next. But, I will live, whichever it is to be.”
You cannot steal my money. I have none to steal. You can pretend to be me — people have done that since the time of Thespes — but, just like Thespes, you would have to drop your mask at some point because, if you are anything like me, you wouldn’t even be stealing my data.
You could ruin my life by telling people who I really am, but I am ahead of you: I have already told people who I am. You could extort money from me — but what would you extort? My share portfolio? My yacht? My gardenias?
Who would murder me? What for? Because I won’t be extorted? And I buy what I need and I need very little. I need a new blind on my bathroom window. I’ll save for it. But I’ll buy it from Velux, because it’s a Velux window, and not from anyone else. There are better targets for your machinations than me.
And I have better protection than Kavlar: I have my faith in God. So, steal my data. I have a funny feeling that you will thereby make me successful; even honoured, perhaps; upstanding and respected. I don’t need that, so you don’t have to steal my data if you don’t need to. I don’t need you to, but it might be a big favour if you did.
I have been in all the abysses and cesspits from which data robbers emerge. I know.