Where does old information go to die?
Apparently cats find a quiet spot to hide in just before they
pass on. Humans often go to the
hospital.
So there ought to be a final resting place for old diary
entries, secrets and personal information we don’t want to share. But there isn’t. Old information just lingers on,
waiting in the shadows to be brought into the light once again. Old information is like a zombie.
I was reminded of this recently by Facebook. I had a profile on Facebook for a few
years. It was a useful way to keep in
touch with old friends I didn’t see socially any more. That’s where old friends go to die, by the
way. When they have stopped coming to
your house, and no longer call you, they appear on Facebook instead. But anyway, I stopped using my profile about
seven years ago. I deactivated it
and then forgot about it.
That was until a couple of weeks ago, when I got an email
from Facebook saying, “Welcome back! Thank
you for reactivating your profile!”
It wasn’t me who had reactivated it, of course. Someone had managed to steal my password to
open my profile page. I presume that
they were criminals looking for useful information which could be used to
access my bank accounts.
Well, nothing has disappeared from my bank accounts so
far. And I managed to contact Facebook
to let them know that I had not suddenly moved to Brazil (from where my profile
was accessed), and asked them to permanently delete my account. It’s much easier to deactivate your account
than actually delete all the information.
Deleting it is a process which takes several weeks. It’s hard to kill zombies.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the criminal thought about
me as he looked through my profile. I
worried that I might not have led an
interesting enough life for him. I
remember making a virtual bookshelf, showing some of the books that I
loved. Do Brazilian criminals like
Haruki Murakami? I posted photos from my
holidays. Did my photos make him want to
go to Shanghai and Chiang-Mai, or was he bored flicking through them?
I have read that using Facebook can make you unhappy. The reason is that you can see all your
friends’ old information – all that they have chosen to share with you. And because they want to make their lives
look interesting, they only share the good bits. So everyone else’s life looks great, while
you are sat at your computer doing something boring like uploading some photos
or commenting on someone else’s photos.
So you feel bad in comparison.
My New Year’s resolution for 2018 is to lead an interesting
life. I want it to be interesting for
me, and not for any Brazilian criminals who might want to take a look.
Happy New Year!
Vocabulary:
to linger on - to continue, especially when it seems natural
to finish, leave, die etc.
to see someone socially – to meet someone for fun, not for
business etc.
to deactivate something - to turn something off; to make
something unusable
to reactivate something – to turn something back on, to make
it usable again
virtual – not real, existing only as a computer image
to flick through something – to look at something only
briefly
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