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General discussion

It depends on how stupid you are.

Nov 15, 2005 10:08AM PST

The web is certainly a place where vulnerability can be tremendous. The electronic safeguards make it difficult in fact very difficult to steal information. However as is the case with a military tank all the security in the world is useless when you leave the door open. It takes a hacker a heck of a lot less than thousands of times the effort to break into a database containing thousands of identities, than it takes him to break into one persons computer that has reasonable security.
PEOPLE LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN by not bothering to be sure that their firewall is operational.
PEOPLE OPEN THE DOOR TO STRANGERS by giving information that they should not give (especially to strangers)

Anyone can tap a phone line and listen in. There is no encryption on voice lines.

The greatest vulnerability is the corporate databases being hacked or the corporate greed leading to loosened security. Sears opened an account in my name without ever telling me. I found out when they came looking to me for the money that someone else had spent. They had a application that I had signed in 1969, and they claimed that it authorized them to open an account for me. I have heard that some banks have adopted the same practice.

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