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Paris Syndrome: We've Got It
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We're not sure if we're happy that Low Culture has come up with a diagnosis for these odd feelings but at least we know our problem. Obviously, we should have posted about Paris Hilton's sidekick being hacked by now but we didn't. You know why? We felt bad. Not just for all the people in her address book that got crank called to oblivion but also...for her.
We know, we know. Perhaps no one on the planet represents the decline of western civilization more than Ms. Hilton but something about the situation just seems so wrong to us. Maybe it's the willingness of people to stop thinking of celebrities as real people; maybe it's the continued blurring of the lines between the public and the private and the ethical questions of publicizing the private information of people, no matter who they are. Maybe it's because we have a sidekick of our own and don't want anybody logging on and downloading our grocery lists and "Great American Novel" ideas that we've tapped into the notes section making it the 21st century cocktail napkin.
Wait, it's not empathy for Paris we feel. What we feel is the realization that with so much of ourselves on the internet and in wireless devices, it is easy for anyone with just a passing interest in our lives to know more than we want them to. As Engadget points out, it's entirely possible that this so-called hacker could have easily just gone to the t-mobile website and answered one of the simple password check questions to get login information and then gone to town. No adept hax0r skills necessary just some ingenuity.
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Thank goodness we have good relationships with all our past girlfriends and haven't done anyone particularly wrong recently. We wouldn't want someone to be working on accessing our sidekick, our email accounts, our whatever in some kind of karmic get back. If Paris has shown us anthing, it's that you've got to be a lot more careful with things you want to keep private.
Life Hacker has more on how to keep your information safe.
Okay, we don't love Paris. We love privacy. We feel so much better now.
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