"Privacy" by Ann Bogle

Privacy

I was affianced to an Analog Boy, and he was a victim or target of what our culture calls Identity Theft. The trouble seems to have been caught or solved or preliminarily investigated by accountants at his bank. On another occasion, his credit card was nabbed without his having used it online. There was a process for recovering his loss after his paper statement arrived in the mail. I bank online. Once I made an Internet mistake in agreeing to buy software to prevent viruses or spying. It was a scam, a Ding-Dong or Tick-Tock trick. I called the bank near midnight and learned that the bank had stopped the purchase since it came from overseas. I ordered a new account number and had to wait a week without it. I try to be cautious. Spying is a different concern. Privacy also. I feel there is a loss of privacy just in believing or realizing it is possible; our forebears did not experience loss of privacy digitally, perhaps in another way. My mother learned that her real estate license—she had decided not to practice when she learned that banks approved mortgages without considering wives' incomes—was fraudulently in use. She got a call about it. It was the 1970s. That is not to address Intellectual Property, subject to confiscation by government or industry, web pages that contain our work, something we may be blithe about if writing has no monetary value to the creator, as we say.