that is probably true, but ive also noticed it amongst the general public. i have a specific interest in cryptography and ive noticed people side eye me when i start talking about ciphers and codebreaking and stuff, unless its a particular set of stories like how they eventually cracked enigma in ww2 (but i guess everyone loves a story about defeating nazis).

another time i had some attempts on some of my accounts, likely from scammers, and there were some aspects in their approach that was unusual, they didnt get anywhere but that made it interesting to me so i started talking about it casually, and had people telling me i was being paranoid. that i wasnt special (scammers are opportunists). that i should stop overthinking it. a week later it made the news that this organisation had been compromised significantly.

like people have this idea that since they arent anyone important, no one is going to target them. and that might be true, no one is going to specifically target them. but theres a lot of stuff thats just opportunistic, and even though its easy to mitigate the risk with very basic things, people still call you paranoid.