9781422280577

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Understanding Our Fears

Computer Fears Chapman University conducts an annual “Survey of American

Fears.” Right at the top of Americans’ worst fears—up there with terrorism, illness, and going bankrupt—is crime involving computers, such as computer hacking and identity theft. There are a few reasons why we fear computer crimes so much. In recent years, there have been many high-profile “hacks” (officially called “data breaches ”) of big companies, including Target, Sony, several large health- insurance companies, and many more. These hacks have exposed the personal data of hundreds of thousands of people. People worry about computer crime because, indeed, it does happen quite often. And in some cases, the theft of personal information can be extremely damaging and hard to fix. Another factor is media coverage—the press tends to be very interested in hacking stories. For instance, a data breech of the Democratic National Committee was a huge issue in the 2016 presidential election. When people hear a lot about something in the media, they tend to focus on it as a potential threat—even if the threat against them specifically is low. One last thing: computers and computer networks are mysterious to most people. There is something spooky about the idea of evil geniuses who can do some sort of computer

magic in order to steal from regular people. As we see over and over throughout this series, people often fear what they can’t understand. People fear computer crime both because identity theft can be very damaging and because hackers seem mysterious.