Random Thought Of The Day #534

Day 534

I think I'm being paranoid. I've had this really really bad feeling that something really bad is going to happen for the past few days.

So as I've mentioned a couple times recently... using software to anonymize your IP is wildly helpful. For a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being that I don't want every single thing I do to be logged on some ISP database. They don't need to know my shopping habits or what movies I'm waiting to be released. They don't need to know how often I check into Fet. Or what news stories I'm reading. Or if I'm doing it from my laptop or my phone.

But the thing is... shortly after I began using it, my laptop started getting wonky. It was already kind of a piece of crap, but it was eating more processor than the little bit of stuff that I was telling it to do should have required. Then... headcrash on the hard drive. I tried for a few days to fix it & get it running again before ripping the whole machine apart & also finding that my motherboard was shot too. So I trashed it. I don't throw away hard drives though. I smash them. I have my tax records on there. My banking information. My passwords. Personal information. And even with a headcrash, someone with the know-how can retrieve the info.

So out comes the sledgehammer. Take the machine apart. Rip out the guts. And smash them to bits. Basic information safety stuff.

But somehow I feel like maybe something was going on in my system that wasn't supposed to be. Like running anonymizing software opened me up to host or play an endpoint for someone else doing things. I don't know.

Throw that on top of changing my wifi password a few weeks ago becuase I KNOW that I had a network intrusion with someone using it to run a torrent client & I think my paranoia is mildly justified. Something just kinda "feels wrong" right now.

I don't know. I'm just being paranoid, I think.

I think that the mild paranoia about that mixed with my usual unease around my birthday & the holidays is probably not doing me any favors. So if I seem a little off for the next few days or so... don't mind me.