An article on the tech pages of the BBC news website about Piracy.

No, not selling illegal copies of DVDs. Piracy. You know: boarding a seagoing vessel and plundering the cargo. Fortunately the pirates concerned did not go on to kidnapping or murdering the crew - but pirates* they are none the less.

Why is the article on the tech pages? Well these pirates did not want to waste the effort of boarding a ship just to discover someone’s houshold furniture in a container. They already knew what they wanted to steal and had determined that it was least well protected at sea. They had found all the details by snooping on the correspondence of the shipping companies.

So next time you’re ordering something of great value, it might be worth wondering if every company involved in delivering it to you is as careful with the information as you, no doubt, are.

I mean, you wouldn’t be so dumb as to let everyone know through social media what you’d just bought, now would you?

Yes, I know you’re unlikely to be ordering a shipping containerful of computer processors but then the effort involved in breaking into and entering your home to steal your new 3D mega-TV is not as daunting as finding and boarding a ship in the ocean.

*The chance the pirates boarded the ship and said ‘Arr!’ seems very low to me.