Do you know what your computer is doing right now? Could it have fallen in with the wrong crowd?

I’m asking because we have been warned that Russian hackers may be trying to get into British computers.

The plan would be to use malware to disable UK laptops and phones, thereby attacking our ability to communicate and also giving us a nice break where the office can’t send up extra work.

Computer experts say Russia has developed a Covid for computers, which will be distributed using adult websites. That makes it harder to control than real Covid because people in the UK were willing to stay at home for 23 hours a day and not visit any friends or family, but you can’t stop some people visiting those websites.

Computer viruses have been around for a while but I imagine this one is compared to Covid to make it seem more shocking, or to get some people online to swear it doesn’t exist.

In some ways we should consider ourselves lucky; while previous generations face the threat of actual direct attack we’re at the stage where our computers are being threatened.

I know what the older generation would have preferred.

The reason this headline caught my attention is because we are so dependent on our tech that we’re nervous when it’s under attack.

I worry that if the 5G network goes down I won’t know how to drive home without my satnav.

When Instagram or Facebook suffers an outage it actually makes the national news. People go onto Twitter to complain that they can’t use social media.

These days everything is done on computers. If our laptops can be hit I am sure it could affect self-scan tills.

We would have to go back to waiting for a cashier.

You may prefer that but remember they use a computer to scan your items too. The check-out person will have to sit there making a beep sound with their mouth as they hand you your goods.

It’s hard to think of a part of our lives where computers aren’t involved. I recently stayed in a hotel and had to write in the guest book by hand. It felt like I’d travelled back 100 years.

While commentators on TV speak of energy independence and how we shouldn’t have let Europe become so reliant on Russian gas no one will stop to ponder on how reliant on computers we have become.

They couldn’t really say that as the TV station they’re on is recorded, transmitted and received by computers.

Let’s hope reading about this online is as close as we get to making it real.