Friday, April 11, 2014

On Being Hacked




Very recently our bank accounts were hacked, so skillfully that after I spent days doing all the rudimentary work of changing user names and passwords and bank numbers and informing the necessary direct depositors, it was hacked again, within a week’s time, all of which left me and my bank colleagues bewildered. How could this happen again and so quickly? In the midst of all this, a decades-old memory floated up, a memory long buried because I had had no need to think of it from that time to this. But now it spilled over me in full remembrance.

Several years ago when I was a new minister engaged in my pulpit, the church enjoyed a veteran soloist who graced our Sunday Services with his lyric, tenor voice. I knew that he drove an early-model Pontiac that he cared for diligently. It was classic, well secured, and garaged (which in San Francisco was no small accomplishment). He loved it and drove it with pride, parking it carefully in a spot in the parking lot that was clear of other cars. One Sunday morning he came into my office before church, pale and stricken. It seems that someone had stolen his gem, and when the police found it and showed it to him, it was completely stripped beyond recognition. I could hear the pain and shock in his voice, and I listened carefully but wondered how an old car could matter that much. It was, after all, a thing that could be replaced with something newer.

I now know how he felt. I know of the sense of attack on private things, the helplessness of not being able to change what happened or how to keep it from happening again. I’ve done all the business moves to secure everything, but I have yet to deal with the blow to my personal security. Invasive technology is moving much faster than my coping skills. Are the things we used to count on as out of control as they seem to be?

The money that was taken is important, but I think it is the theft of respect and dignity for my own person that was staggered. I will take the protective measures needed to secure my personal data, but it will take longer, though, to heal the anger and sadness over the fact that someone would be so bold as to commit such a personal violation against me.

I hope my old friend is smiling on me from the invisible realms. There is no comfort in being in the same boat.

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