Stranger than Fiction

My mother is convinced people are reading her email:

My mom: “Michael (that’s what she calls me when she’s mad at me), you don’t think my email is stopping somewhere before it gets to you?”

Me: “Gee, I hope not. Who knows what they’d think of the seventeen items you’ve forwarded me today alone, including the video of the kitten licking the face of the puppy?”

My mom: [Angry silence]

Turns out she was sort of right.

In a New York Times report last Friday, Google admitted to “unknowingly” collecting so-called “payload data” from individuals sending information across password-unprotected networks that Google collects to put together its Street View feature on Google Maps.

This is not going to make my mom very happy. It will go like this:

My mom: “Michael (she’s still mad), I told you they were reading my things. Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

Me: (Long pause, then) Oh @#$*, you were talking to me? I was watching “Glee”. That Jane Lynch is just a hoot. What did you say?”

My mom: [Even angrier silence, lasting probably for at least a week and a half]

Okay, mom, here’s my response. If you are too darn lazy to password-protect your network, you absolutely deserve to get your information “borrowed”. This is not “Big Brother”, it’s just being a doofus. It is not a difficult process (set password, write password on sticky note, tack sticky note to bulletin board for extra protection). So do it and then you don’t have to worry about anyone knowing things about you that you don’t want them to know. And I don’t have to suffer through more conversations with my mother on this topic. Let’s get on this people!