HAVE YOU BEEN HACKED!

Has your computer been hacked? Or should I rephrase that to, has your computer been hacked and you don't even know it?

For months, I have been receiving emails from friends peddling get-rich-quick schemes and selling "vitamins"- and Viagra and Cialis- online.

"They" claimed that "they" were more financially "solvent" than ever before and asked that everyone in their address books join up and get in while the going is good and start selling this shit online.

Being very good friends with a few from whom I thought these emails came, I called and asked how they are and if they had fallen on hard times and to please stop with the emails.

They had no idea what I was talking about and mentioned receiving similar phone calls from friends.

They had called in "IT" experts, they had called in "computer repairmen" and all they could suggest was changing email addresses.

But, the damage had already been done and these people had received abusive emails from those tired of these email "chains" and had attracted even MORE junk mail.

Apart from this, many- including myself- are receiving torrents of emails saying that emails sent from our computers to people we don't even know are "undeliverable."

Every day, I have to delete at least 400 of these emails.

And to think one very well-known television personality told me how he had "no idea" how to "maximize" views on YouTube and how Google Searches cannot be manipulated.

Oh, puhleeeeese.

On a more serious note, there is so much happening in the jungle that is cyber world and where the bad has blended with the good and it's hard to see who is wearing the white hats.

Like Dylan sang, "It's getting too dark to see/feel like I'm knocking on heaven's door" and "Anonymous' is everywhere and almost anyone.

It's all a blur "out there" where angels fear to tread and where and there is more to the eye about many things which we read and believe and think it's all hunky dory and that the Bogey Man won't come calling when we are asleep.

There is MUCH more to the eye as to why Jerry Yang left Yahoo, why the one-time internet giant is struggling and why Alibaba has had its shares suspended.

NEW CNET

Like the glory days of the dot com boom and where everyone was caught napping, there is a downfall about to happen. One can smell it even if they were Pinocchio.

All this talk of "social media" and how it can be used- and how it can be used to con many by unscrupulous people and companies- has got way out of hand- and become big business which uses and abuses naïve gremlins to the game. Social media MIGHT have been consumer-driven, but, today, these same consumers are being sucker-punched by Big Business and Big Bucks.

When governments start using this "social media", when Mark Zuckerberg sells a large percentage of Facebook to Li Ka-shing- Hong Kong's richest man and when Rupert Murdoch starts to tweet, it's time to stop spending time on LinkedIn, Facebook, stop giving free content which gives you no ROI and posting free new songs on YouTube where copyright laws remains very grey.

It's time to get back to living life in the real world and looking people straight in the eye and seeing who blinks first.

Hiding online are some very strange characters who can be anyone you want them to be- and anyone they want you to think they are.