Season’s Greetings

This time of year usually is for reflection on the year that has been.

Did you do all that you said you were going to?

Was it a good year?

Did you achieve the required book sales?

Do you write under your own name or do you use a pseudonym?

For some of us writers, we don’t mind using our own identities while some of us prefer to be a little more private; but just how private are we?

As most of us are aware in today’s society, our privacy and data are constantly under attack. For those of us that read the book by George Orwell called “1984”and read about Big Brother watching us, may have thought at the time that this was a bit far-fetched, now we realise just how prophetic that book was.

You may write on your laptop, desktop, Smartphone or your IPod but everything on these devices are at risk, if you don’t use the right safeguards. Use of firewall, anti-malware and anti-virus programs are very necessary for any of these devices you may use, you don’t necessarily have to use all three but definitely one, preferably two of these would be prudent.

Keeping them updated is very important.

I’ve heard many times this year people who have lost their work because of viruses, Trojans and worms, the common denominator was their systems had no protective software.

Your devices are constantly under threat, not just by hackers, or programs like “Weeping Angel”, phishing pages, ransom ware, and a host of other such maladies, not only are corporations, government, and other organisations watching you, the person next door maybe as well.

Naturally someone with access to your spending patterns can quickly build up a profile of you and as such could potentially steal your identity, and with the use of key logging could see every keystroke you make on your device and have all the information you have.

Hopefully, you will already know this, if you didn’t you now do. I was speaking to someone earlier in the year, he told me that the book he was writing had been erased and he suspects that someone else is using that work that he’d created.

If someone knows that you are an author, it’s not out of the bounds of possibility that person might steal your work and publish it under their name, happens with music and screenplays, it could happen to you too.

So as we lift a glass to celebrate the year that is been, let’s safeguard our books, devices and other equipment because they are important to us and we should not be negligent.

There’s no use crying after spilt milk.

Most of us know that when we are writing, we save our work frequently in case of a mishap; therefore we should protect the device that the work is on. Do you use your camera on your computer? No? Many people now put a Band-Aid over it.

The song Every Breath You Take by The Police, has these lines “every move you make, every step you take, I’ll be watching you”. Unprotected devices can reveal much more than you may want them to.

Let’s be creative and protect our work, someone somewhere is interested in finding out more…….and more.

Season’s greetings everyone