Beware, O, ye blasted hacker, whomsoever thou art

By Dr. James L. Snyder

Under normal circumstances, I am a rather cool, calm and collected person. I say normal because not everything in my life is normal. It takes a lot to rattle this cage of mine but once rattled lookout whoever rattles it.

I am saying all this to get to my point, which is, somebody hacked my computer email account this past week. If you think I will take this sitting down, oh, I guess I am sitting down right now, but I assure you I will not stand for something like this. I have never been so rattled in my life.

If a mistake is mine, I will own up to it. If it is not mine, lookout sender.

The first thing I did was to call my cousin who is an attorney, Charles Sues-A-Lot, and laid the case out before him. My first question to my cousin attorney was very basic; “Is it still against the law to murder someone?”

As all good attorneys do, he hesitated and thought about it.

He then went on to explain that if he could prove insanity there was a good chance he could get somebody off very lightly.

“Insanity,” I asked, “is that hard to prove in a court of law?”

At this point, there was no hesitation whatsoever. My good lawyer cousin said, “Not in your case.”

If insanity runs in our family, I am convinced it trotted over into his pasture a long time ago and has been milling around for years.

At this point, murder is out.

If I actually knew who this person was, I could “defriend” them like they do on Facebook. You can be sure I would defriend him with all of the sarcastic bitterness I could muster on that hot dog.

I noticed this last week when I accessed my email a bunch of different pop-ups popped up on my screen. Instinctively I tried to unpop them without any success whatsoever. Every time there was a “pop-up,” I had the instinctive desire to pop someone in the nose.

At one stage, it got out of control and about 17,000 pop-ups jumped onto my computer screen at the same time. Without thinking, I immediately turned off my computer.

If anybody knows what I did, you realize what I did was a terrible thing to do. I encrypted, or whatever the term is, these pop-ups permanently on my computer. When I opened up my computer, it was pop-up time for the hacker.

Things can be done to “unhack” your computer, which I put in full force. I really wanted to hack into this hacker’s life except he probably does not have one. I mean, after all, where are the jollies of hacking into someone’s email account? I can see someone hacking into my bank account. I would love to see someone hack into my bank account and see how much money I don’t have.

If I was a small government, I could see somebody trying to hack into my email accounts. As it stands, where is the payoff in doing something like this? This ghost hacker cannot see me and my frustration after being hacked. So, what is the good of it all?

These pop-ups on my computer were coming fast and furious.

Then it hit me. This is not some ghost hacker hacking into my email account, it must be the government. The government must be behind it. I remember something called “fast and furious” in the news a while back. Was this what they were talking about? Am I now a casualty of Big Brother-itis?

There were many similarities between what I was going through and our government.

First off, the whole thing was rather annoying. I am not sure there has ever been a time in our country when the government has been more annoying than now.

Then, all the hacking did not make any sense to me at all. How much of the government is really making sense to anybody anymore? I am sure there is somebody, somewhere who can make sense out of our government but he is probably on the run.

All of this hacking of my email has interrupted my life. So has the government. The government has taken on a new phase where it is not happy unless it is interrupting my life every day of the week. I would not mind so much if the government would take at least one day a week off. But no, it is a 24/7 kind of annoyance.

A friend of mine said that everybody goes through this sort of thing and it is kind of an equal share in the misery of being on the Internet.

Equal share? That’s government lingo if ever I heard it.

After three days of torturous working at my computer, I finally got the pop-ups to stop. I changed the password of my email account and brought all of this nonsense to a stop.

I won the battle against that blasted hacker who tried to ruin my week.

With a steaming cup of coffee and my open Bible, I read some comforting words. “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, then he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4 KJV).

My relationship is of such a nature with God that nobody can hack into that relationship. I rest completely in God’s competent hands.

Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. His web site is www.jamessnyderministries.com.