Innocence lost

We didn't even know that it was in the house. No one know what was going to happen that evening. How long had it been here waiting for the right moment to complete what it was put on this earth to do?

Why?

Who?

How?

Why us?

Why now?

Why, just why?

Andrea was the first to find out about it. Shock. Disbelief. Horror.

What else could we have done? How could we have kept this "predator" away?

So many questions. So many hours spent fixing the problem.

I am, of course, talking about her laptop being compromised. Hacked. Digitally hijacked. Remotely taken control of. Leaving our sphere of controlability (sp?/new word? You saw it here first).

No matter what you call it, what it is is a violation.

Sure, it is not a home invasion robbery or a car jacking at gun point, but the emotional distress is no less real. Not that there was any information worth getting off of her laptop, but I hate to think that the emails it sent out to her friends were more successful.

Now this perpetrator that has violated the sanctity of our Internet connection. Our connection with the outside world, if you will. The very wires that we trust to bring us, among other things, celebrity deaths and drunkenness, local current temperatures and expected eyeball drying high temperatures, and maps of other parts of the world that look like a better place to live than here.

Well now I just don't know what to do. We invite this "information superhighway" into our home and for all the trouble that we had getting it here, we are digitally accosted. Forced to give up information that we never would have otherwise.

How long will it take for me to trust again? I want to believe that Charles Nelson Riley is really dead, but I learned that over the Internet. The very same Internet that invaded Andrea's computer and took away her privacy!

I want to forgive it, but I just don't know what it will take for me to trust again.

Maybe I can do a Google search and find out what I should do.