I assume she was not any more sophisticated about internet technology than the usual assortment of politicians in DC. I don't think ANY of our congressmen was an IT professional, and what I have heard coming out of hearings and such shows a shocking level of ignorance in some. Good politicians DO "have people for that" as do a lot of important or powerful people. In fact, she did have an IT professional supporting her server's security.

Just as a laugh: Colin Powell used an AOL account as Secretary of State!

The problem as I saw it was not that she had a pro take care of her server but that she had a server. It simply opened up right wing idiotic rantings for something which would have been easy to avoid. Imagine a private server and it only contained your private emails. Emails you did not want to share with right ing nuts. Picture it. Yep Every right wing nut can now make up whatever lie they want to to describe what you are doing with your server and now it occupies ALL of the public space. Bit the bullet and go through the available government system.

Yes both Sec Powell and C. Rice had public email accounts for private use but apparently Sec Rice never used her account and Sec Powell used his sparingly, and apparently not with staff. More interesting is the use of private email by Kushner and I Trump. ... should I say lock them up???

John Solomon, a major player in the Ukraine Gambit.

Trump:


Zelensky brings up an ask related to the United States’ military aid.


Trump then sets up the quid pro quo:


Trump then names the investigations of the DNC and Biden.

===============

Boom! #LockHimUp!

But that's the whole point.
Secretary Clinton (and President Trump) both pretty much represent the last vestiges of the old typewriter/word processor/day planner book generation of elected officials.

Some time ago they introduced a new thing called email and the Blackberry came along, and her general computer knowledge stopped right about at the place where people of a certain age and mindset just simply stopped maintaining curiosity and desire to learn. She learned how to do email and maybe calendar planning and that was what she wanted. Some people just decide, gradually or even suddenly, that they're not interested in learning new tech, it's just the way it is.

My oldest brother cannot live without his smartphone but he can't even begin to figure out how to operate a new laptop with either Win10 or the latest Apple OS, but his wife who is the about the same age is deft with them both.
He had a Blackberry and the conniption fit he threw when he had to figure out a Google Pixel 2 was something you could have bought tickets to see.
At one time in the 1970's Peter Haas owned the fastest growing chain of "super Hi-Fi" stereo stores in the Houston Area.

My ex-wife, same exact thing.
She passed away two years ago at age 70, but when our marriage fell apart in 1995 she knew how to use WordPerfect, but she never quite got the hang of the internet, even despite family efforts to get her into it to keep in touch. When she died, she still had a flip phone from two generations ago.
And this was a "genuine Hollywood starlet", former wife of the guy who associate produced Red Dawn in 1984, who learned to became a showbiz creative office manager, and she could work the phones and schmooze a room full of top celebrities like the pro she was.
And all done on paper.

So while it may indeed be true that some resort to outside resources for evil purposes, sometimes it is just a lethal combination of tech-ignorance and old age arrogance that leads down such a path.
It is much easier to just go off the reservation and "get the bootleg liquor without the test questions and the forms to fill out". (like they used to have to do in Utah state controlled liquor stores!)

The larger issue here of course is the fact that the USA can no longer afford to elect computer illiterates to public office at such a high level anymore. They do not need to be IT pros but they need to demonstrate a good and solid working knowledge of the tech that most of us take for granted today.
They need to have a level of skill in the field sufficient to prevent them from falling prey and they must be able to demonstrate the ability to USE this tech in a constructive way in their everyday duties at least as well as the office staffers they hire.

A logistics manager at a trucking company doesn't need to be a certified diesel mechanic but they at least need to be able to understand that diesel engines are difficult to start in sub-zero temps, they need to know the height and weight dimensions of their trucks, and they need to know that drivers require eight hours of sleep per day.

I still have a flip-phone too. I like not having to pay $45/mo for mobile telecommunications and I like not giving my privacy away. I don't belong to Facebook, Twitter, either. I'll probably never, ever have those two snoopy eavesdropping bitches Suri or Alexia in my house, too.

Understood, but you DO know how to operate a personal computer, yes?
That was all I was getting at, the computer illiteracy of many "persons of a certain age" who are currently holding elected office at a congressional level or higher.

It is all part of what used to be referred to as our "digital divide" and as it turns out, it's not just an economic divide, it's also divide defined by age. There are plenty of senior citizens who are computer savvy but sadly, there are plenty who never were and never intend to be.
And it is also a divide bounded by some very strange belief systems as well, too. There are those who are convinced that our current high tech will destroy the human race.
Well...it might, but we might destroy ourselves by other means before it ever gets the chance.

Funny thing just popped into my mind:
As much of a motorhead as I happen to be, my son cannot distinguish one type of vehicle from another. A red car is a red car and a brown car is a brown car...that's it as far as he's concerned.

It's not because of a lack of awareness or education.
Karen was a Navy diesel mechanic and I grew up as a motorhead so he could have easily become one by osmosis.
It just doesn't float his boat, that's all.
He couldn't care less, and I think that's probably how it is for our older non-computer folks.
It's an "evil TV set with a keyboard" as far as they are concerned.

Daryl says that all cars are just wheels with boxes, to him.

I believe my RR posts are pretty legible, my links always work, and sometimes I include piccys. I'm good in that department.

So your continued ownership of a flip phone, in your case, is not a sign of computer illiteracy at all.
But...you're a rarity.
Most times, when still seen today, it's a sign that a person's enthusiasm for new tech ground to a halt a generation ago or that they can't afford an upgrade.

My recently departed Aunt stayed firmly in the vacuum tube and rotary dial era till her last day.

(the phone in the basement)



She could afford an upgrade.
She had no intention of ever doing so.

I still have one hanging on the wall in the kitchen.