I was born in January 1981 in Hennigsdorf near Berlin, in the East, in the former GDR. I'm a true "Ossi" (East German). When I was a child, adults still walked through the village with metal milk cans, rubber boots, and pitchforks. When I was 8, we still listened to tube radios, watched black-and-white television, and experienced the end of broadcast hours. Cars were made of cardboard, had no heating, were extremely rare, and whenever a car drove down the main street, we children marveled and would briefly move off the road with our toys.When we were teenagers, riding through the countryside on our Simson moped in the spring, we had to clean the helmet visor every 30 minutes because a layer of insects obstructed the view. Mobile phones and computers? Not even in our wildest dreams. I’m now 42.I have witnessed the entire development: TV, radio, cassette, CD, computer, DVD, BluRay, streaming, mobile – all in sequence. It has been a fascinating journey. From the Commodore C64, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Linux, and so on, I was one of the nerds. Nights, months, years in front of the PC. Hundreds of re-installations of Windows 98 - XP because I had deleted or adjusted something I shouldn’t have. Using the PC for work and writing? Never. The PC itself was what fascinated me.In 2010, I completed my desired training as a media designer. The official job title: "Media Designer Digital and Print, specializing in Concept and Visualization."Since 2010, I have had my own website, and in 2016, the first version was archived in the Wayback Machine. Since then, I have been writing about topics from the world of computers. I started actively engaging in IT with simple programming languages (scripting and markup languages) like HTML, CSS, PHP, and jQuery. Today, I mainly program in Delphi and Object Pascal, a high-level compiler language.I published a free digital course for social media managers, wrote many guides on video editing, and achieved quite good search engine rankings. Nevertheless, despite the success in search engines, I completely overhauled my website and focused on IT security. My search rankings plummeted (despite my 301 redirects in the htaccess file on my Apache server).I asked myself: "Ralf, what do you want? To rank high on Google and Co. with social media and video editing topics? Or to offer topics that people need more than ever today?" My answer was clear: "Forget the good click rates. I’m now doing something important!"I decided to focus solely on IT security. Taking courses, obtaining certifications, reading, learning, experimenting, securing, and isolating IT systems. Intentionally infecting my test computer until it can no longer function. I found out that this is an endless pit.Well, great! I’ve given myself quite a task.Now I write in blogs, on my website, and on social media mainly about IT security topics, with tips for the average user and try to make my field as accessible as possible. I also make mistakes, and quite a few, which is why I usually publish important information first and then make minor formatting adjustments, correct spelling errors later, or refine indentation and text layout afterward.Given the multitude of threats and IT attacks, data theft, encryption, extortion of individuals and companies, and even hospitals!!!, I had to make a choice. Either, as my instructors in media design training said, "It must be perfect! It must be finely tuned down to the pixel! 4 out of 10, Ralf-Peter!" Or provide the information, come what may.I decided to release the information and then perhaps revise it later. Hackers, malicious actors, extortionists, viruses, trojans, and malware leave me neither choice nor time. I have to set priorities. With AI accelerating everything even more, I’m almost afraid of where this will lead.Until 2017, I was fascinated by computers. Today, in 2024, I think: Tech giants! It’s going too far. Humanity is losing control over its technology and becoming irrevocably dependent.I hope I can help with my books.Best regards, Ralf-Peter KleinertRead more about this authorRead less about this author