I spooked myself by making my very own cyber shadow!

With the news last week that TalkTalk had suffered a cyber-attack, there appeared on our TVs the usual crop of experts instructing us to use different passwords for each website, changing them all regularly.

Can’t help but think it’s all gone skewy. Wasn’t technology meant to make life easier for consumers? Those of us born before the arrival of the mobile phone have brains trained to remember phone numbers, but I fear for the generation that grew up with the microchip.

How are they supposed to remember which password goes with which site? Does this one require a capital letter at the beginning?

Why is the onus of security on us anyway? Don’t companies have a duty of care to their customers?

After screwing up in spectacularly different ways, both Volkswagen and Ulster Bank pledged that none of their customers would end up out of pocket.

Your company isn’t going to rob me? Could you make a more a vacuous assurance? It’s tantamount to the Fire Services promising not to burn down my house.

Corporate culture is exceptionally efficient when it comes to exploiting your personal details. Each time you log onto a website, hordes of cookies and bots are unleashed, recording your history and habits, which they then sell to the highest bidders.

If I were to write online about a 1957 Mustang Convertible, mere minutes later there’d appear at the side of my blog an advert for USA Vintage Car magazine.

When it comes to making a profit, global corporations spare no expense at finding the most efficient technologies. Shame they don’t apply the same effort to protecting us.

If you’re becoming paranoid about passwords and terrified of trolls, get a grip. Before the internet existed, anyone could find your name, address and phone number simply by picking up a telephone directory. You’d hand over your bank account details and signature each time you wrote a cheque, and leave a copy of your signature and credit card number on the slidy zip-zap machine whenever you purchased something.

I refuse to believe that people have become less trustworthy since then, any more than companies feel concerned for their customers’ welfare.

To read Charlie's column in full, please see this week's Galway City Tribune.