I was once a happy-go-lucky consumer who enjoyed ambling through shops and online indulging in some unauthorised purchases, aka those that weren’t on my list. Nowadays, I’m just highly suspicious and mildly annoyed most of the time, scowling when my phone rings, whistles or toots, alerting me to the next call, text or email attempting to inject me with dopamine and trick me into signing over the family farm.
My cynical, distrusting demeanour is again heightened with hackers holding Qantas to ransom after using “vishing” – voice phishing – to gain data from the clients of cloud-based customer-relationship platform Salesforce. Apparently, they have stolen customer data, and I am now at risk of having my information used against me.
Illustration: Marija ErcegovacCredit:
How will I show my face when it’s discovered I’ve never been a member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge? I jest, of course, although that little quip did enter my head as a distraction to what it all really means for me and others who have given Qantas their details, the same details we share with dozens of other companies.
As another layer of distrust entombs me with this latest cyberattack, it also has me reflecting on just how different things are in a world that struggles to keep evil from innovation. And that has thrown this once happy-go-lucky consumer into a constant state of hypervigilance.
Two examples come to mind. First, I texted my husband recently to alert him that I’d spent $2.19 on our joint credit card. My husband checks our account every day and this was an irregular amount that may have had him suspect a rat. We’re not penny pinchers, just eagle-eyed as to who might be helping themselves to our money, uninvited.
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Then, later that day, I answered an unknown number and was greeted with a subcontinent accent. I nearly hung up. You could jump to the conclusion that I’m living under coercive control or that I’m a racist, but I’m neither. I’m just getting older and determined not to be the next victim of a swindler.
As it happened, this unknown caller was legitimate. I had to reel in my snippy tone. But I’ve been conditioned to suspect the worst – that it was going to be another overseas scammer promising to fix my computer while helping himself to my log-in credentials.
I have passwords as long as your arm, double-authentications, fingerprint this, facial-recognition that, along with 114 hide-my-email addresses. Still, each day I get unsolicited junk and phishing attempts from all around the world from people who want to steal from us.
