Two major security flaws in the world’s computers, mobile devices, and servers have been revealed. Is anybody surprised? Settle in, no need to have a “Meltdown”.
Taking security seriously has been a lower priority by the tech companies until relatively recently. In fact, technology tends to be one major product in our lives which is released for sale in varying degrees of unfinished. Finishing the products and fully testing them is very costly, and if you can get away with selling unfinished products–why not?! Car companies would get away with selling unfinished products if they could, but people tend to die and there are costly recalls to contend with. People keep right on buying unfinished tech products and using “free” online services, so keep it coming!
“Cloud” services are very convenient but when you put our data together with a bunch of other people’s on a system that is managed by a giant far-away company–guess what–your data is more at risk of being broken into. If you are a paying customer to a cloud service, you can call in to the call center and if you can get through to a real person, really give them a piece of your mind about the lack of security! Sadly, while this might might make you feel a bit better, the person you talk to probably has little to no power to change anything. For the “free” online services (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) I hate to tell you this but you are not even a customer, you are the product. Advertisers are the customers. Therefore the only real recourse you have is to delete your profile and stop using the service. But then, how will you keep in touch with your friends? Remember clicking that little “accept” button when you set up your “free” account? Buried in the legalese, it said that in exchange for your use of the service your personal data can and will be used in ways you probably don’t appreciate.
Our lives have become laced with technology to a point we can hardly remember what low-tech life was like. Do you remember life before the barrage of group text messages? People actually made plans in advance and stuck to them–WOW! Can you imagine a world in which you could not share videos of your cat’s funny tricks with the whole world instantly? It was rough, but humankind manged to survive.
Happy New Year. Try not to do anything on your computers or devices that you would not everybody to know about. Put as little information into “The Cloud” as you can. That should keep you about as safe as possible.