My kids were chatting the other day about having received emails from their kids (my grandchildren) elementary school informing them that their systems had been hacked and their kids private data likely was compromised. I’m not certain what compromising data could be had from seven year-olds, though maybe some medical information and of course, social security numbers? This seems somehow less of a violation in an era when Elon and his hacker henchman, ‘Big Balls’ have already been granted access to all federal data servers and have no doubt installed backdoors so that long after Agent Krasnov has assumed room temperature they will continue to have access.

This strange episode of a hacked elementary school system reminded me that I had once planned to “get off the grid”. Not the power-grid, the omnipresent online world where all of our personal information is sold to highest bidder. Obviously, I was never able to do that before and couldn’t now even if I tried. It’s all too pervasive. We’re fully immersed in the surveillance state with cameras on every traffic light and constant notices from banks and other institutions of commerce that they too have been hacked and all our personal information has been stolen.

Having realized that we are living in this self-inflicted hell where it is impossible to opt-out of everything electronic, I figure I might at least try to reduce my attack surfaces wherever possible. This began with trying to close any account I was no longer using. For instance, I’ve had a PayPal account since the 1990’s and even have a PP credit account, like a credit card. I also have an eBay account that’s associated with it and it dates back to the 90s as well. I haven’t bought or sold anything on eBay for at least a decade now, maybe a little longer, so I decided to close these accounts as a way to kickstart my modest efforts to not keep so much personal data “out there”.

Closing the PayPal credit account was fairly easy although because it involved open credit, I immediately began getting emails from my banks and credit card companies, who, apparently monitor my credit rating closer than I do, all informing me that there had been a change in my credit status and was I aware of it. I’m going to take the high road here and assume these were merely good faith efforts to help me monitor my credit status, but that didn’t make it any less creepy. Close one account and fifteen minutes later receive 20 emails from 20 different vendors asking if I knew one of my credit accounts had been closed suggests to me that there might be too much interaction between parties in the financial world.

I then tried to close my eBay account but couldn’t because I had a $28 credit and they wouldn’t be able to close my account until that had been resolved. I said fine, send me a check for what you owe me and I’ll close the account. Not so fast. The only method available to receive that refund was via my PayPal account which I had just closed. Hmmm. How do I get around this? eBay told me I could create another method to obtain those funds. They wanted me to give them my bank info or another credit card so they can issue me a $28 refund and then close my account.

But the purpose of this exercise has been to reduce my attack surfaces, not add another to the pile.

It reminded me of the time we did some re-financing with a favored bank but only minutes after filing the initial paperwork I was inundated with phone calls and texts from various lenders telling me I was “pre-approved” for a mortgage re-finance and that I should call them to discuss it. When I complained to my mortgage banker that the process somehow notified all lenders that I was “fresh meat” for their business, he matter of factly said, “yeah, I forgot to warn you that would happen. There is a web site you can visit to opt-out of all those calls, here is the URL”. Fearful the phone calls might never end I visited that site in order to opt out. The first thing I was asked was for my social security number in order to opt out of the phone calls…

THAT was the moment I fully understood we are all hopelessly trapped in the Matrix from which there is no escape. We set a trap for ourselves and walked clicked right into it.