Online data unsafe

Anyone who follows current news should now be aware of hazards and controversies growing in the Internet we all know and love. Shoppers and retailers can no longer assume their financial records are safe from electronic thieves, foreign and domestic. Gigantic media companies and their friends in government want to own Web bandwidth that belongs to you and me.

I have personally been forced off the Internet by a local technician who stole proprietary database information and has breached security in organizations that should know better (including the Spokane County Library network where I write this). As a longtime programmer and Web veteran, I can assure you that no computer, regardless of brand or technology, is safe from the bad guys.

Don’t worry about National Security Agency snooping and Eastern European criminals when the kid next door has easy access to highly sophisticated invasion software. If you are not practiced in watching for signs of a hacked network, you will not detect an invasion of your privacy.

Enough. I might go back online when all Internet communication contains an unmistakable identification of the original sender. The present system allows creeps of all description to become effectively anonymous. Good luck out there.

Jim Thompson

Spokane Valley