The war continues
By Scott Hamilton
Senior Expert Emerging Technologies
Last year was one of thenctaziest.in my lifetime, with a pandemic taking control of not only the United States, but then world. I have heard from several people internationally that they were looking to the United State as an example of how to handle the pandemic. The last thing they expected was to see the example of freedom begin to mandate the closure of businesses, churches and events choosing safety over freedom.
To me that was just the beginning of the war against freedom. I was really hoping that the war would be over soon, but it is ongoing. We see battle lines drawn across or News sources, clearly disagreeing on the truth, and social media platforms silencing those that do not share their version of the truth. Last week I talked about the technocracy shutting down Parler, one of the platforms that was still allowing free speech. I am excited to say that this week Parler fired back at the censorship and closure by big tech by bringing it’s website back online.
Parler is not fully operational, but seems to be attempting to get there. Parler’s website suddenly reappeared online Sunday afternoon with a message from its CEO, John Matze: “Hello world, is this thing on?” Matze has filed lawsuits against all three companies that not only took down the site but apparently leaked private information of Parler user’s and seized Parler’s data. Usernames, password, and personal contact information of Parler users began to show up on black market identity theft websites last week, so if you had a Parler account be sure to change all your passwords and keep an eye on your credit reports for the next few months. I also encourage you all to check Matze’s full message at HTTP://www.parler.com.
Our physical lives were impacted in 2020, and our virtual lives are under siege in 2021. It started a few weeks ago with the announcement of the Solarwinds hack. I know we have not heard a lot about it, but that’s because no one knows the extent of the data that was gathered using the hack. The Russian government was involved in the attack and Microsoft has admitted that all their proprietary software source code was downloaded by the hackers. This leaves all Microsoft software vulnerable to future attack.
The Russian hackers gained access to banks, businesses and government agencies globally, and made sure they were not caught until the midst of the election cycle in the United States, which is the largest and richest of the countries vulnerable to the back. The transition of leadership makes it difficult to determine the extent of the intrusions. I suggest reading up on the attack and making sure if you have done business with any of the companies listed on the attack to keep an eye on your credit accounts.
We are living in an unprecedented time and need to be more and more vigilant in the protection of our personal information. Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is a Senior Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sc************@at**.net or through his website at http://www.techshepherd.tk.
