Here’s an exercise in insanity that will overpower even the reckless belligerent brains of my exiled guests.  Take out your credit card and tape it to a sheet of paper.  Write your address, phone number, and a list of your favorite passwords on the paper.  Leave it on a crowded street corner.  Proceed to your nearest bar, relax, and have a drink.  It’s all going to be okay.

So eBay needs you to change passwords because somebody ripped them off.  Target has similar problems with credit card security.  So does your local bank.  Right now your computer probably has a virus of some kind.  No, your antivirus program can’t find it.  The hospital down the street has a thirteen year old hacking their heart image servers.  The local grocer just lost your address to a bum in Belarus.

Get used to it, friends.  If they want you, they’re going to get you.  If a hacker, criminal, kid, or bored alien wants your stuff?  They’re going to get your stuff.  Ask anybody who knows anything about the way computers work.  There’s always a way in.  If you are deliberately targeted, there’s nothing you can do to protect your computer.  Just as there’s almost nothing a company can do to protect your data.

Eventually you’re going to get data robbed.  Maybe it gets used against you, maybe not.  But it’s going to be out there.  Do you doubt me?  Well, of course you do, I’m a moron.  But remember how many cards Target lost, like 70 million?  Why has the universe not collapsed?  Because not even the most Bond villain criminal enterprise on the planet can make use of 70 million ripped cards.

The next time you have to switch your credit card due to an unauthorized purchase?  I ask you to observe how utterly routine the experience is.  Your old one goes away, they ship you a new one overnight.  They don’t call the cops.  They don’t provide an explanation.  They don’t care.  It’s just become part of the business.

Now this is not meant as an advertisement for identity theft companies or anything like that.  They cannot protect you either, and like insurance companies, I suspect identity theft companies are not in the business of protecting you from identity theft.

On Arcturus, identity theft is when a gang of enforcers breaks into your house and robs you of your identity via multiple death ray shots to the torso.  So some perspective is called for.  What I guess I’m trying to say is just loosen up.  When everybody’s vulnerable, your chances of getting caught are rather slim.  If you get hit badly, it sucks to be you, but chances are you’re not going to get hit.

We’ve based all the modern functions of our society on a networked computer architecture that’s inherently flawed.  And so bad dudes are going to exploit those flaws.  Forever.  Don’t get angry, shocked, or yell at companies.  Instead, proceed to your nearest bar, relax, and have a drink.  It’s all going to be okay.

The most dysfunctionally designed concept since aqua cars