Between the USB and BASH vulnerabilities, massive data breaches, ATM skimmers,

[IDemo]

along with the traditional virii, trojans, worms, root kits; along with the NSA, Facebook and Google eyeballing your every click for fun and profit,

Is it time to simply become a Luddite? (Spoken as an electronics tech who has worked in R&D for 20 years).

[RKP5637]

1. It's all over the map anymore! I have a heavy background, I keep up, all opensource. Bash surprised

me. ... but the catch is, one can do everything to be well protected, ... but out there, someone is careless and there's an intrusion, way beyond our control.

[IDemo]

2. That's just it - the beyond our control part

You can run antivirus, MalwareBytes, firewall and exercise caution with websites and email attachments, but you can't firewall your thumb-drive's firmware or Home Depot's database servers, and you can't opt out of the Utah Data Center.

Soon, the "shopping season" will be upon us with expectations of bright-eyed consumers racing through the aisles and running a debit or credit card with 60's magnetic tape technology through a POS (no, Point-of-Sale!) reader to store their information on a server blinking away on a rack thousands of miles away, with no serious hope of defense against someone in Eastern Europe or Fullerton equipped with the latest tool in the hacker's arsenal.

What's to do, keep a bag of $20 bills under the bed?

[RKP5637]

3. "... keep a bag of $20 bills under the bed?" It's seriously crossed my mind, ha, assuming

they are not counterfeit, yet another concern.