Hackers

One of my email accounts was recently hacked from a mobile phone in Turkey. The hacker used my email address book to generate spam about a site with a German Web domain name. My several score of contacts were bombarded with this trash under my name. A person sent me an email on Facebook which alerted me to the problem. 

When I went to the host site of my email account, I found there was quite an elaborate page for just this occurrence. In other words, happens all the time. Nice.

A lot is said about "Web presence". Little is said about Web ethics or etiquette. Perhaps because there is little or none of either. This is an unfortunate evolution of a technology which has the potential for such good for humanity. Dishonesty, I suppose, is also a basic part of the human condition. 

The net result of reacting to unethical behavior is its corrosion of trust in other human beings. This reactionary behavior has become commonplace in the technological world we now inhabit. More people means more good people as well as more bad people. Simple fact of life in an overpopulating species. The pressures of overpopulation accelerate bad behavior when people find themselves at the bottom of the crushing socioeconomic pyramid of free-market capitalism. 

So, as a humanist, I have to work harder to see and elicit the good in people. My best approach is to elicit the good in my own nature and display it behaviorally whenever possible. Respect gains respect...sometimes.  The problem in the technological world is faceless anonymity. Here we are digits. It is easy, I can imagine, to do bad things to a bunch of digits, if you do not take the step to acknowledge that each set of digits represents a person. Do mass murderers see people as digits? Perhaps. 

Immersion in real life always entails risk. What is the worst that can happen? Loss of life itself? Well, frankly, that is inevitable at some time under some circumstances anyway. I do not use this attitude to absolve nasty behavior towards me by others. Quite the opposite: I address nastiness directly when I can see the perpetrator. But the Web is different. Here I must practice harder to let go of insult and injury by the anonymous without becoming a passive victim or an enraged depressive. Here I must be smarter, more involved, more informed. After all, this is all part of being a mindful and compassionate person anywhere.