Heather!
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Online Privacy
In today’s young generation everyone is online. Many parents,
teachers and guardians worry about their children being a victim to criminals
searching for easy targets online. Online privacy is a growing fear on the mind
of these caretakers. Having your identity stolen is much easier nowadays than
50 years ago. Furthermore, now it’s even easier for pedophiles to come in
contact with the children of this time. Therefore, online privacy must be put
at the top of the list to protect our young people.
However, according to the article, “Teens and VentureInvestors Demand Online Safety and Privacy” written by Lora Kolodny in the Wall
Street Journal explains that many teens are aware of the importance of online
privacy and intend to protect themselves. This is a very admiral thing to do as
a young person.
According to the article, “Forty-four percent of teens
surveyed count identity theft as their top concern, 32% worry their social
media posts may create college application problems, and 30% worry their online
behavior may get them in trouble at home. A majority of them use, and seek out
privacy controls when they use social media.” These teens are taking pre-caution
on their social media sites and protecting themselves not only from creepers, but
protecting them from themselves. This may not make sense, but these teens are
aware that what they display on the internet and on their personal sites can and
will be detected by future schools and employers, therefore they must not post
inappropriate things because it ultimately reflects back on them.
Due to these privacy issues, social media sites like
Facebook developed intense privacy settings to allow their users to control who
saw their information and who did not. But many users not only do not trust these
social media sites with their personal information they also may not understand
how to operate such controls. Therefore, many users’ profiles lack such
information.
In addition, social media sites should offer helpful tips to
educate their users on how-to set their privacy settings to further protect
themselves. Because, privacy online is a growing factor in today’s world. According
to the article, “Earlier this year, as VentureWire previously reported, a
venture-backed San Francisco start-up called Skout–the creators of a
mobile-social network, commonly regarded as a “flirting app”–decided to shut
down the Skout teen community when pedophiles used it to target their eventual
victims.” These instances happen and they happen often. Thus, we need to
further educate ourselves to protect us and the ones we love.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Cyber Warfare
An article in the New York Times titled “Iran’s Hand IsSuspected in Computer Attacks” written by Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger
explains a recent attack of cyber warfare. Iranian government developed a cyber-attack
on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry’s computer systems. Due to this silent and
killer attack, Iranian government successfully crippled about 30,000 of Saudi
Arabia’s systems by erasing files and overwriting them.
Even though Iran’s attack was not as powerful as something
Russia or China has the potential to do, it still wreaked havoc among the Saudi’s
systems. This has become a new threat to the world. Instead of going to war
like we use in the past centuries, now we have a new threat through the
internet. Due to the internet’s potential access to confidential files and
special ops systems that is dealt with our government and military, our enemies
could possibly have access to these files information. Or they could even erase
essential information for America’s well-being.
According to the article, James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Friday in an essay
for ForeignPolicy.com, “Iran has discovered a new way to harass much sooner
than expected, and the United States is ill-prepared to deal with it,” thus, we
as American’s need to become more aware of these potential cyber threats, and develop
constructive ways to help protect ourselves from these enemies.
Iran is only one of many potential cyber threats. These attacks
are not only happening between countries governments, but also between regular
people and ordinary companies. These viruses can be conducted by anyone and sent
through emails or websites, consequently putting everyone in risk. Unfortunately,
this is just the beginning of cyber-attacks. It has the potential to get
stronger, more destructive and ultimately more frequent. Therefore, it is
important to protect yourself, your files and your information kept on your
private or work computers.
Hopefully, in the near future America’s government and
military will develop stronger fire walls to keep these threats away. Possibly even
create a new style of protection for the civilians as well. Ultimately, now as
a nation we not only have to worry about terrorist attacks consisting of plane
crashes, bombs or shootings, we also need to be aware and possibly worry about
attacks over the internet. This can be attacks from other countries or even
attacks from within the own comfort of our nation.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Digital Divide
“The New Digital Divide” an article
written by Susan Crawford and published by The
New York Times, discusses a new outlook on our current and future digital
divide. This article explains that recently the quality of the internet has
greatly increased, however this increase is only available to the consumers who
afford it.
According to Crawford, “Over the
last decade, cheap Web access over phone lines brought millions to the
Internet. But in recent years the emergence of services like video-on-demand,
online medicine and Internet classrooms have redefined the state of the art:
they require reliable, truly high-speed connections, the kind available almost
exclusively from the nation’s small number of very powerful cable companies.
Such access means expensive contracts, which many Americans simply cannot
afford.”
Simply put, America is divided into
two parts. Consumers with high-speed web connection and consumers who either have
second class web connection or no connection at all, so a complete divide
between the wealthy urban consumers and the poor, rural minorities.
These wealthy urban consumers not
only have access to the exciting world of high-speed internet, but they also
are always a step or possibly a few steps ahead of the rest. Basically meaning
these consumers have a hand up in education, the latest entertainment and
local, national and global news and information. Therefore, the informed stay
informed and the less fortunate struggle to keep up.
The problem we are having with the
digital divide is it’s simply not affordable to everyone in America. In reality,
that makes sense and that is just how the world works. However, this is a way
America can be a step ahead in the digital world. If this high-speed internet
access was available for everyone then the possibilities for us as Americans
could be endless.
As a quick example, to truly show
how fast this internet is, according to Crawford, “The connections are truly
high-speed: based on a technological standard called Docsis 2.0 or 3.0, they
can reach up to 105 megabits per second, fast enough to download a music album
in three seconds.” This is incredible, even though downloading an album is not
that big of a deal or that important compared to politics or foreign policy found online,
however it just shows that the faster the internet is, the faster we as consumers
can take it in and ingest the information.
In all, this digital divide is a setback
for America. However, there is a possibility in the future, with how quickly
our technology is developing, that this high-speed access will be affordable for
many American citizens.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Online Identity
Online identity is a viral phenomenon that has hit the
college generation and all the ones following. These younger generations who
are in middle and high school believe to put their Reflexive identity online,
which is what we think we are. However, many of them are, in reality, putting
their Ascribed identity online, which is what society believes them to be. This
is exhibited in the social media outlets like Facebook. Unfortunately, these
young generations do not understand how they impact their fellow peers through
their online aviators on social media.
These naïve actions are further explained in the article
On Facebook, Bullies ‘Like’ if You Hate by Emily Layden on the New York Times website.
This article explains how middle school students use their online identity to
bully other students by posting ‘hate’ likes. ‘Hate’ likes, in other words, are
posts that ask you to ‘like’ it if you agree to ‘hate’ it as well. Layden
explains, “For my brother’s half — the younger set, the one that did not grow
up in step with the Internet, but rather with it already established — there is
no wariness, no understanding, no concept of an Internet identity. There is no
such thing for them, for example, as “Internet famous.” There is only fame, and
the allure of instant gratification. This is how cyberbullying has reached a
fever pitch, and where I feel my half of this generation has failed the
younger.” This article starts to open
the eyes of the older generations that are selling this digital life idea to
the negative impact they may be having.
The article by Layden
further explains how these children’s online
identities not only give them too much power, but also shows a perfect example
of interactivity. Interactivity is briefly one judging people on the internet
that are not like us, basically being uncivil to one another. Therefore,
through these aviators these young generations are able to mask their true
identity and act out in cruel and unfair ways towards their innocent peers. If this
progresses further, which is inevitable, the concept of ‘bullying’ will no more
be as simple as It might have been back when the college and older generations
were back in their grade school days. Through these various identities,
cyberbullying will continue to grow and go viral through the internet. This will
leave a stamp on these young generations’ records to forever be known as being
bullies or forever be known as being bullied. Nevertheless, this concept of
online identity may have positive outlooks for some, but there can always be
pitfalls to good things.
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