The flaws of the digital world

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Since the emergence of the Internet, the world has never stopped changing and evolving. Humanity realized that it made life much easier and speeded up processes that previously took a long time or were done manually, which made everything slower. Going to the bank, shopping at the supermarket, going to a lottery shop, studying, talking to someone who lived far away. In short, everything was much more complicated and time-consuming.

Even everyday activities like reading a newspaper, reading medicine labels, doing school work, shopping, everything is done through this revolutionary technology that has made humanity enslaved and dependent in all aspects of life, without giving options other than accepting the terms of use and privacy.

With the internet, the world has become more agile and processes have become much faster. The downside is that we have become dependent and when a failure occurs in the digital world, the result is felt in the physical world, often taking on gigantic proportions.

Let's look below at some times when events in the digital world impacted the physical world.

1 – Mega Serasa data leak

At the beginning of this year there was a major leak of colombia whatsapp data personal data of more than 220 million Brazilians, a number greater than the entire population of the country as it also includes data of deceased people.

The list is extensive and includes among the data that was exposed: full name, ID, CPF, date of birth, gender and credit score. This is quite worrying due to the large number of scams that have been occurring in recent years in the country.

2 – Facebook data leak

Personal data of more than 553 million people in 109 countries around the world was leaked during a hacker attack on Facebook. At least 8 million of these accounts belong to people in Brazil. Data such as full names, addresses, telephone numbers and even biographies are among the leaks.

This is not the first time this has happened. In 2019, another leak involving Facebook occurred, and thousands of personal information was exposed. The flaw was found and resolved, but many others exist.

3 – Hacker attack on JBS

The world's largest meat processing company, JBS, suffered a hacker attack in May of this year, which left the company's systems in several countries inoperable and factories out of action.

After investigation, it was found that the cause was a Ransomware that blocks the system, releasing it only after some payment. In order for everything to return to normal, the company had to pay US$11 million (around R$57 million reais) to rescue the systems and return to normal.

4 – British Airlines’ global failure

In 2017, the airline suffered a global outage that affected the call center, the company's website and also the smartphone app. In addition, it resulted in the cancellation of more than a thousand flights that were due to depart within a period of time.

The real-world mirror of this, in addition to cancellations, was that several London airports were overcrowded and in a chaotic situation. In order to profit from this, several hotels in the area increased their prices, leaving many people with no choice.

How long will the failures continue?

See? It's not robots that are going to take over the world, it's the internet (and it's been doing so for over 20 years).

And these were just some of the major failures, but don't be fooled. They happen frequently even in your city, when you go to the lottery shop to pay a bill and the system is down, for example. Or even when you need to send a Pix to someone and the bank's app is under maintenance.

Nowadays, it exerts much more power over humanity than we can imagine. We are at a stage where life is based on this and any error or failure has a direct impact. Failures tend to continue to occur, especially when dealing with an almost infinite network, where the entire world converges in just one place.