You have zero privacy - get over it. So Sun Microsystems boss Scott McNealy once said, in his inimitably sensitive fashion.
Mr McNealy probably erred on the side of gloom in his judgment of how much we are monitored. After all, surely not every last flippant e-mail and note we compose can be exposed and under scrutiny?
His assertion nonetheless rings true since, security experts agree, all it takes for a system to be compromised is a single opening: 'the hundredth window', to use the technical term stolen by the British trip-hop outfit Massive Attack as their latest album's title.
The proverbial window represents the most vulnerable link in a system, in the same way that castle apertures were called loopholes. If just one of a hundred windows is left open, this leaves a system liable to intrusion.
Ensuring every window is shut requires 'skill', warn Charles Jennings and Lori Fena in their expose of how naked we are, The Hundredth Window (Free Press). Alas, most users remain blissfully ignorant.
'It's hard to accept, but the fact is, each and every one of us today who regularly uses the Internet has a hundredth-window problem,' the authors write. 'We're living in our virtual villa on the edge of the wild, wonderful and dangerous Internet bazaar, and we have a window open.'
