“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller.

It’s a scary thought and a scary world to have it in.
The idea that wherever you go, you’re at a certain risk of losing something of value.
And that’s both in the real world as in the digital one!
How did it ever get this far out of hand?

What are you aiming for?
An actual answer to that question or something to talk about?

Talk, mostly…
Think of this.
Wherever you go, there is something or someone that knows about you.
Either another person, or something connected to the internet.
With every digital payment you make, you leave a trail of data about where you’ve been.
What you bought and how expensive it was.
And that would be enough information to use against you!

But why would they even want to use that information against me?
What do I have that might scare them enough to confront me with my grocery shopping?
Aren’t you exaggerating this a bit?
I mean, I know about the dangers of the internet, but I fail to see how that puts you at risk of anything.
You’ve got a solid base of information about yourself out there, yet not a single word has been used against you.
Why the urge to talk about it now?

Because unlike me, a lot of others might not realize what they put themselves up to.
When you look at the amount of accounts on the internet connected to one person.
There has to be one point in time where something goes wrong and all your personal information lands on the street.

But what can you do against that?

Though, trying to keep the amount of accounts as low as possible is a good start.
Which is possible by using one central system for all your login actions.
I myself enjoy it when I can use things like Facebook or even Google+ to sign in on another website.
That way, a trusted party will handle all my private data, as well as the login credentials.
It also keeps the amount of passwords to a minimum.

The danger in that though is that, once you’re logged in to your Facebook of Google+, everyone on the same computer can look at your private data.
Or just poke around on other websites to create accounts or login to your account.

Which is why my PC has it’s own password that nobody else knows!
I know all the pros and cons of using a single password for all my accounts.
If, by whatever reason, it gets leaked…
You have a lot of cleaning to do!
And using a central service for this is a good thing compared to a general password.
Because there is only one password to change and all the other accounts are safe again.

Okay, so that’s the digital part.
But what about the real life part of this story?

The real part of this security conversation doesn’t have anything to do with personal data.
Or the risk of losing my live or any other’s.
At times, I’m scared that I might lose my job, my wonderful girlfriend, my awesome friends or anything else I care about.
In this case, the lack of security that I can keep those things despite whatever might happen.
That’s what worries me the last few days.

But what reason would you have to think about that at this time?
With all this lovely weather the last few days…
Sure, there must be something better to keep your mind occupied!

Not really…
I’m just having another one of those off days.
Where I can’t find the means to motivate myself for anything.

Cheer up buddy!
Have a drink, talk to some friends.
Do something different to distract yourself.
Do whatever it is that you tell others to do when they feel down!
And know that your security is there once you get home after work.

Thanks for pointing out that I suck at following my own advice.

Hey, I can be useful from time to time.
And we both know I’m right!