What is an Hacker?

tl;dr: an hacker is an individual who challenges himself to achieve something through a path which wasn’t thought of!

I hate the word hacker, although identifying as one. I hate it because society ALWAYS portrays hackers as cyber criminals. Let’s get this straight without bullshitery:

• Joe steals customer data online and sells it on an online black market
• Joe is a cybercriminal for his actions
• Joe is an hacker
• But Joe is not an hacker because of his criminal actions. Joe is an hacker because he found a way to access the data without asking it directly from the customers
• Being a cybercriminal makes you an hacker BUT an hacker is not a cybercriminal!

If society (or journalists, since they create propaganda) started defining fraudsters as cyber criminals and stopped linking hackers to Guy Fawkes, computer terminals, 4chan and nerds, there wouldn’t be so much negativity when using the word hack.

Joe is an hacker for how he managed to access the customer data. Anna is an hacker for her top notch money saving mechanisms when it comes to re-using old products. Bill is also an hacker because he found a way to cut huge traffic lines when applying efficient routing strategies. YOU can also be an hacker by thinking out of the box!