Big Brother Not Just Watching You…but controlling your e-Life

By Richard Sherwin

Sixty years ago, both Republicans and Democrats complained that the military industrial complex was going to control the word. It hasn’t quite come to pass.

Protests helped to end the Vietnam and Korean wars, and some authority went back to the people. And, GE, GM, Lockheed, Raytheon, Dow Chemical and other large corporations lost most of their government power, while other U.S.-based corporate behemoths even went bankrupt in the last few decades.

Now, operating systems and companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple – just as the corporate-industrial giants before them – control what we do.

They control mobile phones, TVs, computers, home security, networked homes – even appliances and home banking.
And recently, they all just implemented security upgrades for everything you use.

Microsoft, as usual, hid this upgrade in the automatic Windows 10 system. So in many cases, users did not have a choice but to upgrade their computers. The result was that the venerable operating system complaints caused an overload in Microsoft toll- free support.

Google had a more subtle way of taking hold of your computer or the appliances running its OS. Google, under the guise of more security for the masses (80% of all PCs and 95% of all mobile devices), now tracks every device you are searching on if it has your Gmail or Google account info. Google now knows when you have switched on or off your PC or Mac, as well as your mobile phone or tablet.

Apple also had an upgrade to its less than six-year-old Mac operating system for Macs, iPhones and Apple-driven appliances. The largest, most successful and richest company in the world couldn’t spend an extra dime to make sure the “free” OS upgrade worked, so many thousands (maybe millions) of its customers couldn’t get their Apple devices to work properly. To make matters worse, its fix allegedly left these devices more vulnerable to hacking. In order to adjust this idiocy, Apple didn’t have enough support people on hand to get to everyone who needed help.

Amazon’s loyal millions (including me) have continuing upgrades to Alexa and Amazon tablets and Kindles, but its tech support is open all the time. Upgrades have been rather innocuous and not harmful…so far!

Those silly enough to live their lives on Facebook apparently have had their lives exposed. Facebook said recently that millions of users’ names and contact info, search info, banking data, physical location and, in many cases, details like religion, occupation, and more was exposed to who knows who. And, since Facebook has lied to its customers time and again, many experts say that when Facebook admits that 29 million users could be affected, it could actually be ten times that amount that are vulnerable to hackers.

What Should You Do?

What can the average person (or even supercomputer literates) do to protect themselves against the modern day corporate- industrial Internet – complex (left out military because who knows what they know about us)?

Does the usual tried and true advice about not upgrading any of our products unless absolutely necessary still stand up? Yes! It does more than ever. And if you absolutely have to update, plan to spend hours with Google, Microsoft, and Apple customer support. If you can find Facebook support (good luck with that), make sure your Facebook account is not so vulnerable or quit the service entirely.

Of course, in many cases Google, Apple and Microsoft will actually have to take over your PC to make these fixes.

What if your TV, cable box, appliances (big and small), HVAC (heating and air conditioning), home security, etc. require upgrades to the Internet-connected part of those products? Do NOT call the computer companies: call the TV, cable company, appliance and home security companies first. And, again, don’t upgrade unless you know exactly what to do and what to expect.

And finally, in about 20 percent of the upgrade case issues, if you are lucky, you still might have to go online and use Google to find out what’s wrong and then follow someone’s directions to fix your problem.