I was almost forgotten the podiatrist that I had visited years ago when I recently received a remarkable letter from him.
“Dear client,” he started neatly, “we are happy to inform you about a situation that may affect your personal data. Last week a security incident took place with access to one of our systems. ”
Immediately I got a spinning feeling in my stomach, perhaps also because it was a rather sober stomach. It didn’t get any better when the podiatrist tried to reassure me: “Your medical data is safe and are in a separate environment. The incident only concerns files that we use for declarations with health insurers. This is information such as name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, date of birth and citizen service number. ”
It was as if a treating doctor added to me: “Your condition is good, but to be sure it is better to hire a funeral director.”
Because which cyber criminal would not be extremely satisfied with the theft of my name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, date of birth and, citizen service number?
Moreover, it was not just a one -man company, but at a large podotherapeutic company, Hermanns, with 250 branches throughout the Netherlands. The director of the same name now advised us in his letter to “be alert to suspicious e-mails” and not just clicking on the left.
Thank you very much for that, but I stay behind how it is possible that a secure system is so easy to squat. What does that promise? I may have already received the answer to that question, because a few weeks after the letter from Hermanns I received the following threatening text message from ‘the Tax Authorities’:’ Your outstanding debt has not yet been met despite further memories. The bailiff will proceed to a conservatory seizure of your household effects. To prevent this, you must pay the amount of 463.30 euros via the attached link. ”
I don’t even have that many objections to that conservatory batter: at least there is finally a forced end to the ever -expanding junk of things and things that I collect around me, not because I love them but ‘because you ever need them again can have and the Blokker is no longer next door ‘. I have more trouble with the fact that my telephone number has come into the hands of some cyber criminal who now tries to inform me of pleasure and undoubtedly sniffing the coke, with a few henchmen on behalf of ‘the tax authorities’.
A few days later my 17-year-old grandson visited me to interview me in the context of his history lessons about all kinds of historical developments that I have experienced in my own long life. It went from the Cubacrisis in 1962 to the rise of the computer. Did I feel very threatened during that Cubacisis? “Certainly, boy,” I said as I tried to tell the grandfather, “but to tell you the truth: with that computer I sometimes feel at least as unsafe.”
He looked at me as if he saw water burning, the water of his desire on which he lets all his favorite computers to his heart’s content.