More Than Meets the Eye
When people think of hackers, they typically imagine young men in their mom’s basements eating Doritos. It’s not your fault that you think that: Hollywood has done a good job of convincing us that hackers are pimple-faced teenagers with nothing better to do. Like many things in Hollywood, this stereotyping is not accurate in real life. Hackers come in all shapes and sizes…and genders. Some of the most influential — and dangerous — hackers on the internet are women. And they aren’t pimple-faced teenagers either.
Notorious Female Hacker
Kim Vanvaeck, otherwise known as Gigabyte, is an infamous female hacker that lashed out at comments about the legitimacy of female hackers and wrote several viruses that wreaked havoc for her instigator. She was barely 15 years old when she wrote her first virus, and her intent was not to steal money or riches but to gain notoriety as a female hacker and demand equal respect from her male peers. She was arrested for her work in breaking down cyber security and had been responsible for creating a number of viruses.
Her viruses included infectious screensavers that required the user to answer a series of impossible questions; a graphical game where players throw coconuts at the heads of male hackers and each time a person makes a hit, they save one file from being infected on their computers; sending viruses to everyone in your Window’s address book; and many more.
How Can you Stay Safe?
If a hacker wants into your files badly enough, they can continue to work on the firewalls and passcodes to gain access. There are a number of things you can do to protect yourself from hackers including using a VPN. VPNs are virtual private networks that can restrict access to your information. The most anonymous VPN can keep hackers from getting access to your files and private information effectively and affordably. Be sure to change your passwords regularly, and always use the dual-identification systems that are put in place to protect your identity. If it seems like too much trouble to set a passcode on your mobile phone, you might want to rethink that. Those codes are often the only thing standing between your information and a hacker’s intentions. While it seems inconvenient to have to have passcodes and security on everything you own, it is worth saving your information in the long run.
Don’t open suspicious emails and make sure you regularly flush out spam from your email inbox. Don’t open attachments from people you don’t know, and encourage family members to do the same.
Be Alert
Being hacked can be devastating to a person’s private information, credit cards, and life in general. While hackers like Kim Vanvaeck just wanted to make a point, her skills are only one example of the kind of damage that can be done by hackers around the world – whether they are male or female. Don’t make the same mistake Vanvaeck’s taunter did; be diligent, and be alert when you are online. It can make all the difference in protecting your personal and private information.
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