Originally Posted by Marthisdil
Wish people would quit saying that they "were hacked".
|
In the world of languages, words change. It is a fact. While it is true that the vast majority of account compromises are not actually hacked and and the login information was learned via some phishing method, the term "hacked" is a nice quick simple term that people use to identify what happened. And it is not going away.
There are thousands of words in the English language alone that are not used today in the context of their original meaning. Take the word "decimate" - this word meant to "reduce by one of ten" and came from the practice of a punishment in the roman armies where if a unit did not perform they would kill one solider in ten as negative reinforcement. Today, we use the word to indicate that something has been utterly destroyed.
If someone says "My WoW account was hacked" and you know exactly what they meant, then the job of using language was successful in that communication occurred successfully.