Old Moon

Friday, May 18, 2012

A Healthy (Healthful?) Mistrust


As I deleted another Spam e-mail with From indicating the United States Department of Justice, it occurred to me that these days suspicion has to be at the very top of instinctive reactions to almost everything, especially on the indispensable Internet.

It must follow that our (that is, most people’s) automatic responses to one another will eventually be tainted if it isn't already. The notion really frightens me. Somehow there has to be a way to recognize and accept the goodwill most of us have grown up to expect from our fellows. 

Will there be a kind of evolutionary process that over time develops the ability to tell the difference between honest and fraudulent, between Spam in life and genuineness? If not, we must despair of our future.

Imagine having the gall and the stupidity to call yourself The United States Department of Justice with a message saying the reader will receive a seven figure number of dollars when the necessary information has been forwarded! Thank heaven this Spammer/Phisher was so greedy and so cynical as to think the mere mention of that much money would entice some poor fool...

Caveat emptor once said it all, but now everyone with access to the Net has to be terminally suspicious all the time.

1 comment:

Glenda Beall said...

I agree. I don't open anything the least bit suspicious, but I still hear of people who don't seem to be concerned about spam and identity theft.

I hate that we have to become a people afraid for our privacy, afraid for our children, afraid for our elders in nursing homes, and just have to be somewhat suspicious of everyone and everything to a certain extent.

Sad, isn't it?