If the US can do it why can't China?

My e-mail is beyond dull and if China wants to read my Chicos, Target, Kohl's, Macy's ads and a few jokes from friends, they are welcome to them.

I think we have to e-mail with the expectation that nothing on the web is totally private.

Kathy

The global network known as the internet is the new battlefield. While major corporations use it to routinely "spy" on its potential market, governments can (and have) used it to shut down the infrastructure of entire nations. I remember watching a documentary about something similar to this news piece. As it turns out, even the major switches and controls for our electricity grid is connected to the internet, so all it takes is for someone to hack into any one of thousands of these switches and they can shut down individual hook-ups or even huge sections of North America's power grid. The same is true for T1 and T3 broadband data trunks. Our lives have become so intertwined with the data streaming through the global network, it's easy to see how our entire society can come to screeching halt at the throw of a switch.

My boss already reads my professional e-mail.  As for my hotmail account--I've thought about this for a long time.  I did use it for some sensitive email correspondence during our financial crisis, but i didn't ever put bank accounts or other specific information on them.  So, I guess the only thing anyone could gather from my emails is what a loser life I have.  haha

that is not really the point, kat.  the standard is not if you are personally harmed and violated by it, but if others might be.  i honestly don't know the answer to that, but i think that yes is likely.

It's not only the act of "reading my email"... it's the fact that a foreign nation is able to intercept (and presumably disrupt) our communication system. The point of my previous post is that the communication system is not just about emails and web sites. It's also about energy distribution, all aspects of public and private transportation, water distribution... anything that requires a remote controlled switch is accessed on the very same internet we use to post our little messages. Those switches have IP addresses and those IP addresses have devices loaded with simple HTML-based control software - like a web site but built in. If those little control panels are breached, we could suddenly see things like the lights going out across half the continent or train collisions or worse.... This latest incident should serve as a warning that our dependance on the global network comes with some serious risks beyond just some Chinese operatives reading your jokes or spam.

yes.  part of what makes this interesting is that the data capture was larger than anything anyone had previously predicted.  no doubt, cyber theifs will find a way to use the very fact of it.