To honestly see good

I didn’t know anything was wrong as I swiped my debit card at the grocery store. In fact, it wasn’t until a day later that I discovered that someone, or something, was on the other end collecting my financial information illegally.

I’d been out with some friends getting food for a campus party later that night, and after we’d loaded up our cart, I offered to pay for everything up front. The transaction went through, but the next day my bank notified me that I was a victim of what’s known as “identity theft.” Purchases were being made in my name from Canada, and when I saw the news later the next day, I found out that thousands of other people had been digitally hacked by this outside source through the same grocery store.

When I first found out about the scam, I had an empty feeling, a deep sense of powerlessness. I’d had things stolen from me in the past, but for some reason this time felt astronomically worse. What really kept coming to mind, though, was how sorry I felt for everyone else who had been hacked. None of us deserved this kind of sneaky attack; we were all doing our everyday shopping, and then somehow we ended up in this mess.

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