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Protect our children

I remember when I was a kid and my parents were very strict about letting me use the internet.  If I did ever get to use it, it was for school work or to play on Disneychannel.com.  I was often told that if I ever got a MySpace account my parents would want my username and password so they could check up on me.  So obviously I just never told them I had one and would only use it if I was at a friend’s house or if I knew my parents weren't looking over my shoulder.  It was a huge thing back then to inform your children about the dangers that were online.  There were often commercials about being safe and asking a parent to use the internet, and I vividly remember my parents preaching to me about not talking to people I didn't know online.  

Today, I feel like the internet is such a giant part of our lives that we forget to teach our children how to practice safety on the internet. Kids are getting cell phones at super young ages now a day and they are often learning to use the computer as early as the age six.  I feel that parents these days do not stress as much how dangerous the internet can be sometimes.  There are chat rooms, cat fishers, creepy old men that pose as thirteen year old girls and our kids just fall into these traps.  Kids these days also seem to be not fully aware that what you put on the internet is much more permanent than what we say and do in real life.  If you write something on Facebook, it can be on the internet for years to come, even if you erase it, and I am concerned that these kids don't think that way.  They are careless and think that they are invincible.  They also are not worried about their futures at the time they post something.  They aren't thinking about what an employer would say if they post a picture at a party, all they are thinking about at the moment is who is going to "like" the picture.  

On safekids.com there are a bunch of links that can teach kids about how to use the internet safely.  There are also links for parents about what to look out for if their child is taking place in some risky activity online.  There is also a link to help kids deal with cyber bullying and even try to prevent it, considering cyber bullying is starting to happen a lot more these days.  I think that we need to keep a closer eye on the younger children that are using the internet and teach them that the internet isn't all fun and games and that there can be some serious consequences for some of their actions.  

Maryland efforts fro reducing cyber-bullying

Today I found an article post on Oct. 3, 2013 in The Baltimore Sun newspaper website. The article talked about the partnership between Maryland schools and Facebook in reduction of cyber-bullying among the states students. Facebook has given Maryland schools a channel, called the Educator Escalation Channel. Though this channel school districts in Maryland are granted access to monitor their students Facebook accounts, and allow them to report any form of cyber-bullying to Facebook. Also, stated in the article Facebook has also agreed to educate Maryland school systems about cyber-bully and how it can be reduced.

Part of me believes that is awesome that Maryland school systems and Facebook become partners for the hopes to reduce cyber-bullying in among Maryland students. However, I believe this a complete breach in the students privacy and 1st amendment rights. Which we learned from class and from common knowledge that the first amendment gives United States citizens the right to free speech and to express there own opinion. Also, I believe that the personnel of each school district that are in charge of monitoring the students Facebook accounts through this channel should be educated on when free speech cross over to be cyber-bullying. My fear is that if they are not educated, I believe that the person who is in charge of monitoring would report any mean comment they find on Facebook and violate the student right to free speech. Which we learned in an article in lab, this violation of the first amendment could result in a law suit.

This brings up the issue of boundary of structure. One of the main issues is knowing who has ownership, knowing who has the right and responsibility to control information of the posts. Since, school districts have access to their students profiles and have the right to report any wrong doing to Facebook, my question is who is responsible for the post if it results in suicide? The student for posting it? Or the school district for not properly report it? Or.... is Facebook at fault? For example, someone from the school district could report the post to Facebook, but Facebook may not have removed the threatening post in a timely manner to prevent harm to the victim the post was directed at.

I believe that the Educator Escalation channel give to Maryland school systems from Facebook provides me with more questions than answers. I believe that it is going in the right direction to combat cyber- bullying. But I believe how this channel is ran and who is at fault if it does result in suicide due to cyber-bullying should be established.

Link to Website Article:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-03/news/bs-md-facebook-school-partnership-20131003_1_cyber-bullying-dale-rauenzahn-facebook

Don't Lose Your Money Online

Being online is an interesting experience. You are exposed to all the information in the world, and its a great way of expressing yourself. When people express themselves on the internet however, it is public for everyone to see. What seems like a virtual utopia also has its down sides. Some people use the internet strictly for their person gain. Almost every web page you visit may have an advertisement about making money quickly or mortgaging your house for some extra cash. To most this seems like a great idea. Making money with no risk, it seems like a dream. But what people don't realize is that when they click on these advertisements and go to the websites promising profits, they are most likely being completely mislead. Websites which offer these tall tales of increasing your money often online benefit the website runner themselves. In the case of investing a common scam for people to pull is called the "pump and dump". In this tactic, a person will create a website for themselves. Once the website grows some popularity they will start claiming that the can give you a 100% increase on your money with no risk. Of course, some people will buy in to this, but buy buying the investments, they are really just putting money into the pocket of the website holder. The scam works put investing lots of money in to a low quality stock, typically priced low so it fluctuates more. Once enough people invest in the stock and it looks like the profits are going straight up. At this point the owner of the website who usually owns a large number of shares of the company will sell all of his shares. This leaves everyone who invested in the company with a worthless stock and usually down money. This has been common with younger investors to make this mistake. But even some young investors are doing it themselves. In one case a "16-year-old, who, in addition to his promise, turned over $285,000 to the SEC to settle civil charges that he committed fraud in stock deals". All for a fraudulent pump and dump scheme. Moral of the story is do your research before believing anything you read online to avoid losing your money, and peace of mind.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pump-and-dump/

Why Don't Parents Care About Online Safety?

Blake Johnson

April 23, 2015

 

 

                                        Why Don't Parents Care About Online Safety?

 

 

In class we talked about the many dangers of being online. Going online makes yourself susceptible to false projected personas by others as well as scams that target people not adequately familiar with how to avoid them. Every online threat becomes magnified when dealing with children as children are much more capable of being influenced than adults and less knowledgeable of when things don't seem quite right. The article by Diana Graber asks "Why don't parents care about online safety". She begins by referencing a particular case in which children were taken away from the custody of parents after multiple negligent acts in which they left their children unattended. The Maryland couple's actions are related to how society differs in reactions versus online and offline care taking of children. "How is it that a society so protective of children offline has left them largely unsupervised online?” Usage online have developed to the point that being online is a completely essential and important aspect of human life. Wouldn't it be logical to treat this up and coming new aspect of life with the same intensity that we place on offline safety? Social networking are one of the biggest problems when talking about the safety of children online. Social networking allows people to project only their best qualities as well as false qualities about themselves through selective self-presentation. Social networking cannot be wholeheartedly trusted as the mode for communication is the easiest and most conducive to deception and lies.

The article then goes to express possible reasons for why adults seem to allow children so much freedom in going online. While at the same time, the author examines why parents don't set as many barriers, rules, and surveillance on children when they're online. The first answer she come up with is the line between monitoring and spying. Parents of course don't want to come across to their children that they are spying on them. "Most parents don't want to spy on their kids and many who do lack the strong stomach, thick skin and discipline required to wade through the icky stuff kids say to get to the stuff that could cause permanent harm," says Bob Dillon of Artimys Language Technologies. There are differences though between mild-monitoring as well as hardcore "total spyware". These differences are the necessity to detect only the most meaningful threats to children. More parents should focus on gaining some type of mild-monitoring type of surveillance for their children online. Total spying isn't necessary and hurts the relationship of the children and their parents. But surveillance to at least some degree is necessary otherwise without monitoring children roam freely and open to various threats that they are more than likely unprepared for. Diana talks about how of course children hold expectation of some level of privacy. This is a fair expectation for anyone to have. But it's up to parents to acknowledge and respect that expectation while mutually making sure of their children's online safety.

Protect Yourself Online

Protect Yourself Online

In the world of technology we live in, with most of us somehow constantly connected to the internet, one of the most overlooked aspects is our online protection. With just a little extra effort, you can become almost invisible, practically totally nonexistent to the bad seeds of the internet trying to spy on or steal your information.

In an article published by Electronic Frontier Foundation, they outline twelve basic steps to take to begin your venture into a worry free online experience.

It all starts by keeping personal information to yourself. Simply the way you have your preferred browser configured can be leaking or "shedding" some personal details such as email addresses or other information you wouldn't readily give away to those you don't know.

The next step to make things a little harder for malicious software of people to get a hold of your info is to understand that some "cookies" are helpful and others are used for the sole purpose of tracking your internet activity, from what pages you visit to what ads or links you click. This is usually done for marketing, but can easily be turned against you.

Step 3) Keep a "clean" email address. Basically, have a throwaway account that you use to sign up for sites or use in more public places, and make sure it can't be tracked back to you. It will basically act as a spam bullet shield, keeping all the garbage away from your important account and it can easily be deleted or forgotten.

Step 4) Similar to step 1, don't give out personal details to strangers or just-met "friends." This seems pretty easy. You wouldn't walk around a busy city with your name, address, and cell phone number written on a sign, so why do that online?

Step 5) Your place of employment probably monitors your internet access, watch what emails you reply to. If you remember the whole Mike Waite fiasco, thats basically what this is talking about.

Step 6) Beware of sites that offer rewards for contact info. This is pretty basic knowledge, just don't give out your information in exchange for discounted goods or services. Is your information being sold really worth that two year subscription to sports illustrated for 40% off?

Step 7) Don't reply to spammers, ever. Again, pretty common knowledge. Don't respond to any unsolicited bulk emails, and never take them up on whatever offer they're trying to sell. The Nigerian prince that needs a few thousand and promises a few billion in return, he's not real, and you sure as hell didn't win the Australian Lottery because you can't win if you don't play.

Step 8) Be conscious of web security. If you don't know what https:// is yet and you've never seen the little lock icon, you might be a little behind the times. Do some research and make sure you don't have any possibility of compromising your credit/debit info.

Step 9) Be conscious of home computer security.

Step 10) Examine privacy policies and seals

Step 11) Remember YOU decide what info is revealed, when, why, and to whom

Step 12) Use Encryption! Now we get into the stuff I'm most interested in. As the article says, there are more than just simple threats to privacy. There are threats of industrial espionage, government surveillance, identity theft, disgruntled former, and system crackers. PGP or Pretty Good Privacy is the easiest way to encrypt plain text. So for example, a message between two people would begin by exchanging a public key, the sender would write the message in plain text and use the public key to encrypt it, they would then send it to the intended recipient, who is the only person that has the private key or cipher. The recipient can decrypt the message and read the plain text. If someone else came across the encrypted message, it would look something like this. By the way, if you can figure out what message I encrypted, I'll gladly give up $20.

There's so much more I could talk about in terms of staying hidden online and I can even segue into real world use, but that pushes the limits on aspects that should be covered in an academic setting, as much of it is used to create new lives or used within circles of unsavory people and online black markets such as Agora (which can only be used over Tor and need a referral to sign up)

Good luck with your online anonymity - stay safe out there.

Scams aimed at the elderly

Elderly People are some of the most suet after people when it comes to scamming. Scammers have many ways of scamming the elderly. These methods can range from fake telemarketer scams to fake medical establishments. I’ll be writing about the scams that have to do with CMC that I found in this article http://www.ncoa.org/enhance-economic-security/economic-security-Initiative/savvy-saving-seniors/top-10-scams-targeting.html . The first type of scam ill address is a counterfeit prescription drug scam. The method of scamming is normally done on the internet. This is a popular scam because older people have started to search for cheaper prescription drugs online. The problem is that the older people can’t tell the difference between fake prescription website and real ones. This is not only a problem with money. The fake drugs the scammers are selling can have harmful effects on the body when taken. This method of scamming has become more popular since the 1990's with the rise in prescription drug usage. In general older people are a main target for internet fraud. There low knowledge of the internet is what makes them so frequently targeted.  There are a few different ways older people can be scammed online first is through email. A scammer may send out a mass phishing email say they are a legitimate company such as the IRS. The elderly aren't aware of scams so they just go along with the email as if it were legitimate. Another way a scammer could take advantage of an elderly’s lack of internet knowledge is Pop-ups. Scammers can either use Pop-ups to give the victim a virus on their computer or extract personal information from the victim.

The next type of scam might be the most popular, Telemarketing. This scam is done over the phone and is a perfect scam to aim at old people because they purchase twice as many products over the phone than the national average. The fact that this scam is over the phone is what makes it so dangerous. the scams are hard to trace and even harder to prevent.

 The last method of scamming elderly I’ll write about is called The Grandparent scam. This scam is similar to the telemarketer scam because they are both over the phone but there is one big difference. In The Grandparent scam, the scammer pretends to be the victim’s grandchild and they are in a bad situation or any other position where they need a sum of money quickly. They might ask the grandparents to wire money to a certain place by a certain time. This scam is even worse because the scammers are taking advantage of grandparent’s hearts and good will. Unfortunately this type of scam happened to many grandparents. Someone called my grandfather saying that I was in a drunken driving accident and I was arrested. They asked him to wire a certain amount of money to a place in New Jersey so I could make bail. By the time my grandfather found out it was a scam he was unable to get his money back and even got in contact with the FBI and little could be down. Proving how hard it really is to trace and catch the scammers.

- Kyle Hamilton