Today I opened my email and found a story about how Sarah Palin, the Republican VP Nominee, had her email account hacked. Here are some quotes:

On the heels of media reports that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was using a private Yahoo e-mail account (gov.palin@yahoo.com) to conduct Alaska state business, hackers have broken into the account and posted evidence of the hijack on Wikileaks.

An activist group calling itself ‘anonymous’ claimed responsibility for the compromise and released screenshots, photographs and the e-mail addresses of several people close to Palin, including her husband Todd and assistant Ivy Frye.

Following the release of this story, both Sarah Palin’s better known account gov.sarah@yahoo.com and the gov.palin@yahoo.com account have been suspended or deleted as revealed by a test email sent to these addresses by Wikileaks. Although the reasons for the deletion of both accounts can not not yet be established, one interpretation is that Palin is trying to destroy her email records.

This story is a classic example of people not knowing the dangers of the Internet. People can be clueless as to how they have their stuff compromised. However, in this case, it is extremely dangerous for politicians. People “armed” with access to private materials, and I don’t care which politician it is, can be manipulated. There could be hundreds of emails that are fine, and just one email taken out of context could skew opinions.

The comment that irks me is “Although the reasons for the deletion of both accounts can not not yet be established, one interpretation is that Palin is trying to destroy her email records.” If you’ve know that your email accounts have been compromised, accounts that contain very personal and work related information, wouldn’t you want to prevent people from using it? This “one interpretation” makes it sound like Palin is covering her tracks, where as she might just not want the whole world prying into her life? Give me a break with all this alluding to cover up and conspiracy.

If Barack Obama had his email compromised, I’m sure there would be enough ammunition to attack him and make up stories of corruption. Only time will tell what will be posted about what was contained in her email account. Honestly, I doubt they found anything incriminating or they would have posted it already.

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