Cashing out in mid January 2020?

[Nikilei]

3 minutes ago, Da5id Weatherwax said:

Lass, I've spent more years working in cybersecurity than Brian Krebs. He's brilliant, yes, and probably a better counter-hacker than I am but wasn't it only 2000 or 2001 when he started specializing in it after an encounter with a worm program? I think that was the time, and it was only shortly after that I started to see his name on the program of conferences I'd been attending for years. He's also a really cool guy to have had a beer with at those early-days conferences. Smart as heck and witty too.

"back when (the internet) was Lexus/Nexus" ???  - It never was. The internet existed when that was a specialized standalone network and it joined the internet, it did not become it.

You are quite right that companies and agencies have historically done "not enough" to protect the data they hold. There were no laws or regulations setting any standards at the start and so they did the bare minimum - or nothing at all - and everyone from Crunch to Rob Morris had a field day. We were ALL hackers back then, when the worst that was likely to happen if somebody cracked your system was they'd leave an email for the sysadmin - from himself - snarking about the security hole he's left open. I remember working through the night on efforts to contain the Morris worm when it hit the university I was working at.

Then the crooks moved in. Companies and agencies were still not doing enough, because it wasn't seen as a priority. Even when the first standards were circulated they still had no force of law so companies saved on the bottom line by only paying lip-service to them. This was in spite of the advice of IT folks, we were still seen as "back office geeks" and not properly understood by management. It took some pretty horrible breaches before laws were written to hold companies liable for not following the standards. Even then there were all these legacy systems that were full of holes and the attackers had read the standards too and the "arms race" was in full swing.

Of course I "mind" living in a surveillance society. But toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube pretty easily. Once the can of worms is open the only way you'll get them back in is to use a much bigger can. Fortunately for me, and for others that have been around as long as I have and knew - even before the big breaches started being disclosed - that there was no more privacy on an email than on an old-fashioned postcard, that everything you did or said on the 'net was there forever, that the interconnection of data sets would enable a panopticon for a sufficiently capable organization, we recognized that you didn;t protect yourself by trying to not put the data out there (not unless you were intending to live off-grid in an earthship somewhere in the desert) but instead by mitigating the risks of it being seen.

Please stop lol!!!! You have an answer [way too long though] for everything!!.  Anyway, take your opinions, live your life and grant others the same respect. Have a good day!

[Da5id Weatherwax]

The history IS relevant, and is not a matter of opinion - the facts I presented to you can be confirmed by several others on here if they wished to devote the time to it.

Maybe you've been around online long enough to remember this... Plonk.