I have a terrible habit of allowing myself to believe in the goodness of people. Then, from time to time, something happens and proves me wrong. I spend some time regaining confidence in others only to be brought back to earth with a thud and so the circle continues.

I was in my teens and living in Luton, a college town 40 Km from London. One warm evening I was walking home from town, listening to music on my personal stereo. Suddenly a group of 4 or 5 youths surrounded me and wanting the contents of my pockets. One sharply ripped off my necklace while another threatened to “tuck me up”, with a knife maybe? I was visibly scared and I was lucky to be let go unharmed, minus all my possessions of course.

I forcefully threw down my cola, angry at myself for allowing the situation to occur. I promised myself I would endeavour to never again put myself in a similar situation. The first thing I learnt was to never shut yourself off from your environment; in my case, by wearing headphones I had impaired my ability to hear. More importantly, the headphones had projected an image of vulnerability. This idea of projected image is very important, to become street wise it is essential you learn to portray yourself as alert and confident. Don’t be shy to examine your environment and make eye contact with people at an early stage; they must see your awareness and confidence regardless of how intimidating their external appearance.

Keep to well lit and well travelled roads and move with confidence. If you are attacked, absolutely never allow your attacker to drag or threaten you to another location, you must scream and kick to attract attention. Once an attacker has you in their preferred location your life is in danger, this is going to be their comfort zone, they have planned this in advance.

I can tell you from direct experience, the inadequacies of the English justice system are almost beyond words. It is somewhat bizarre to of spent five years defending myself against significant criminal allegations inside a civil court. Eventually I lost my case due to seismic errors and outright lies and prejudice. No charges were brought against me yet I am explicitly prohibited from talking about my case; a story for another day.

During my five year ordeal, a strange story was unwinding in parallel. My neighbour, a single mother, was being visited by her violent ex-boyfriend. Living upstairs from her, I was aware of much of their activity. They would frequently argue and the guy was clearly abusive, both emotionally and physically. I learnt he had previously been to prison though this fact never prevented me calling the police several times when his behaviour became unbearable. He would pound on her back door until she let him in, then he was extremely abusive, calling her a whore and slapping her. Once he was strangling her, knocking her head against a wall, I could hear her gagging whilst he incessantly shouted at her, repeating himself like a madman.

The contrast with my own experiences was striking; I have never been violent yet I was constrained by a judge.. and there was this crazy fuck beating on his ex-girlfriend, seemingly with impunity. In both cases, the common denominator was control; a judge thirsty to extract revenge on me and this guy never able to simply walk away. Control is an ugly trait, recognise it and respond to it fast.

I’ve received and sent many parcels, from the Americas to south east Asia and from my perspective, government run postal services have widespread corruption. Mail fraud sometimes receives showcase sentences yet overall I would say this is one of the most prevalent crimes of our times. The temptation is too great, gifts and money literally flowing into their hands then miraculously disappearing into a void.

I have a variety of experiences with missing post, one in particular comes to mind. I was once foolish to send cash in the post, naively thinking I was clever enough to disguise it’s contents. I worked very hard to hide it’s contents yet all the recipient got was a torn and empty package. The thief never cared for how hard it was for me to gain the money and they never cared how the money was going to be used. I may of been stupid sending cash in the post but why can’t I? Parcels are personal possessions with personal stories; it could of been something towards a life saving operation or simply a gift to make someone smile when they really need it, so where’s the respect?

The lesson is obvious, simply never send cash in the post and pay the extra for a registered “signed for” service. It shouldn’t be this way, after all, it amounts to protection money from their own misdeeds.

Similar to the postal scams and arguably more intrusive are malicious hackers, and “social engineers”. They vary from the curious and petty thief to organised international crime; virus writers and identity thefts, all the way up to blackmail and extortion rackets. At any one time, due to complexity and human error, there are many thousands of exposed computers worldwide being remotely coordinated and controlled without their owners knowledge. Hackers make extensive use of these exposed computer armies (“botnets”) to carry tools and viruses, providing leverage and a layer of anonymity.

I have had contact with many people who have had money raided from accounts and money scammed from “virtual beggars”. If people truly understood the scale of attempted hacks made to each and every net connected computer, they would respond fiercely. ISPs could do a lot more to fight this but while we’re waiting for them to catch up there are a few things you can do, you are not immune:

1. You can make your computer significantly more secure by avoiding Microsoft products entirely. If you want to beat the numbers, either buy a Mac or install another operating system such as linux, I can not stress this enough.

2. Keep your wits about you and never give money to your online “friends”. There is no “dying brother” or whatever sad story they give. The real world has real organisations to help people in such situations.

3. Keep important data, finance etc on removable media such as flash drives.

4. When it comes to passwords, do not choose dates, names or anything remotely guessable. Do not use natural language in your passwords and do not try to be clever, for example a password of “password”.. To choose a good password, take the first letter of every word in a sentence e.g. “My name is Serena and I like chocolate” becomes “MniSailc”. Choose obscurity over cleverness and take some time to learn more about Internet safety.

A few months ago a guy came to fix my boiler. Within two minutes he returned to his car and found someone had stolen his satellite navigation unit. I was surprised, I live in a very residential area away from main connecting roads, we therefore speculated it was someone local and a bit of an opportunist. A couple of months later I was to experience more criminal activity, this time on my own property.

I used to lock my bicycle against a tree in my back garden. You couldn’t see the bike from the street, access is down the side of the house and behind a gated fence. Luckily I was home, when I heard the single click of a cycle pedal I glanced out of my side window and saw someone by my bike! I had to act fast, there was simply not enough time to call the police. I grabbed a small wooden club and ran to my front door, intentionally making lots of noise, jangling my keys etc. From my front door I could not see this guy, he was behind the gate. It wasn’t safe to approach him as you never quite know what someone will do when they’re cornered so I waited a little, gave him the chance to make the first move, after about a minute he vaulted over the garden fence. In British law this would be considered a “measured response”.

My bike was okay though he managed to cut halfway through the cable. Of course, I keep the bike indoors now, on my stairs as I have nowhere else to keep it. Why should this be so? - it’s my garden.

I informed the police only to be told it’s low priority, I got the impression it would of been low priority even if it had been stolen. I later discovered a neighbour had her bike stolen from her garden, she now keeps a folding bike indoors.

In this instance I was lucky, I could of discarded the noise as something else. The lessons here is, be vigilant and don’t become complacent about security.

So far I’ve been fortunate to escape injury but, of course, not everyone is so lucky, two recent stories exemplify this; In one recent news article, a man was set upon and murdered when he approached a group of people vandalising his property. In another news story, a man was being charged with manslaughter after confronting a burglar who allegedly jumped from his window - or pushed - is that a disproportionate response or executing your right to protect yourself on your own property?

What really concerns me is how fast serious crimes rise from the flames of low level “anti-social behaviour”; one day it’s vandalism, tomorrow knives and guns. What do bike thieves do next? What do postal thieves do next? What do abusive control freaks do next? The police tell me it’s all about priority; is that admission of failure to deal with the root causes? Is it surprising people are increasingly feeling criminals are operating with impunity? Is it time to fight back?

Respect.