Why People Hack You
The short answer is that it makes them money. Suppose you are a larger business looking for a new niche and you have more resources than ideas. Would it be easier to spy on a thousand people or to come up with all the ideas yourself? Suppose further that you could integrate to a point that you could get very specific proprietary information from the key people in the field. For example, you could see profit margins, marketing plans, and key ways of doing things.
If it makes sense to steal data, you have to ask yourself a simple question. Do people like that exist or is the world a really nice place? I can tell you from personal experience that people like this do exist and you should protect yourself against them.
Apathy
A very common response is apathy. I don’t have anything valuable to steal and don’t really care. It makes sense because security is a pain and takes real work. If you have valuable data you start to really care. People have the right to privacy and nobody has the right to steal information off your computer. It is the apathy of consumers, that makes it so easy for hackers to target them.
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