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I confess that I take every hacking attempt personally.

Every attempt to log into my accounts. Every attempt to set up a sync.

Every contrived phishing attempt. Every unusual spike in traffic.

Feeling myself targeted, it might just drive me to silence.

Daily, I ponder pouring my thoughts into an air gapped laptop alone.

To withdraw from the world and back into myself, returning to obscurity.

But the rational voice within protests: “You’re not targeted. You’re a nobody.”

It reminds me of all I have learned at work, of the thousands of daily brute force attempts.

Of the weekly phone calls from dodgy call centres, pretending to be Microsoft or Carphone Warehouse.

Everyone nowadays is a potential victim of cyber crime, it reminds me. It is relentless.

But to that rational voice, I respond: “Let’s not be complacent.”

There’s a concerted effort to target every weak link to every object of interest.

Modern cyber crime is more the realm of espionage than the outlet of lonely nerds.

If they are playing the long game in an effort to socially engineer their next raid, so must we remain alert.

Back up every one of your accounts right now. Change every password. Enable multi-factor authentication on everything.

Set up that air gapped computer, disconnected from the web, to store anything of any worth.

I live in hope that I am afflicted by paranoia alone.

Hopeful that I am a nobody, whose life is of no interest to anybody at all.

Hopefully, I am just your common-or-garden consumer afflicted by your common-or-garden cyberpunk.

Hopeful that I am not the target of activists of every hue, disgruntled by my writing.

Or of state actors or cyber bandits planning their next great heist.

It could indeed be any or all of these, from whom none is safe.

Better a Luddite gardener with no reach than a resident on these lawless digital highways.

Don’t be surprised, then, if I suddenly disappear again, cutting myself off.

If only I could tame my ego, which demands it be somehow heard.