User:Bwill75

Tehnology Eating Your Life Away
Falling at the feet of technology

More and more innocent computer users in today’s tech-savvy society around the world, and whom are surrounded by electronics such as iPods, mobile phones and advanced computer systems are becoming victims to privacy breaches and exploitation. The extremely progressive uses for computers and computer software have become an increasingly worrying issue. Anything from credit card details to best friends addresses have become simple items to obtain by specialised criminals seeking a “quick buck”. These poachers of information also use other people’s details as their aliases; this therefore opens more doors to what’s available to the criminals.

Social Networking Interactions

Social networking is a big contender in respect to online communication. The ease of posting comments and sending emails through a social networking site such as MySpace has become very popular over the years. To view people’s comments that are set to private can simply be accessed by a person with a simple knowledge of computers and the Internet. By merely changing a segment in the URL, any predator can access innocent Internet users personal comments, sometimes even containing personal details such as; street addresses and phone numbers. The opportunity to obtain this information has become more readily available as technology has advanced.

The abuse of personal information posted by innocent teens can also lead to more prolific crimes. With details like street addresses, phone numbers and family names being shown on users profile pages, the dignity and privacy of some families has been demolished and their whole family’s history and details are now exploited to the entire world.

Blogging

Blogging is a common form of information being posted on the World Wide Web. Major networking sites such as; MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and even topic or enthusiast based websites like, www.fordlaser.com where blogs are the main structure of the website are a playground for cyber thieves. People are becoming more aware of the risks of putting their personal information on contact cards that are usually linked to strings or blogs that a person has posted. Although today, the cyber invaders are unfortunately one step ahead. In the early days of cyber theft, many people did not know realise the outcomes from things, such as posting personal information, like mobile phone numbers, street addresses, and their full names on blogs or bulletins. The actual outcome was not known until years later after blog spots and networking sites were commercially promoted. The way in which cyber thieves gain personal information is by gathering small segments of confidential details and collating them into a file, which would finally lead them into a person’s private life. This information collected can never be totally eradicated from all computer systems or hard drives, as someone around the world will always have this information backed up or stored on servers permanently.

Cyber Theft

Cyber thieves are always looking for new ways to improve their hacking expertise, utilising new software being released and manipulating it to obtain a greater array of information shown or even hidden from the view of predators. Hacking has become a consistent problem since computers and networking programs were first invented. Hacking is a form of controlling or modifying secure items for personal gain. The word derives from a German word meaning “someone who makes furniture with an axe”, implying that hacking is done in a rough manner, and there isn’t only one way to do it. Hacking originated in the 1960’s and was first recognised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Many technology literate “enthusiasts” use hacking to acquire control of innocent people’s computers and details. Hacking of computers is also an affect from people blogging personal information. The reason for this is that hackers have also come up with strategies to log into people’s social networking accounts and access their confidential emails and comments left on friends pages. To reduce this problem, confidentiality is the key thing from keeping cyber thieves at bay. The way to stop people accessing private details is by simply not posting them on blogs or in emails sent through social networking sites. With the Internet becoming a greater asset to companies seeking personal history of future employees to European fraudsters devising plans on how to hoax you in to lodging your personal details through a fake Bank website, you are always being watched.

Online Scams

Emails can contain useful information to cyber thieves that we as laypeople don’t realise can very beneficial to the sake of crime. The saying, “One mans trash, can be another mans treasure” isn’t always just a figure of speech. In today’s technology based world of communication this metaphor has taken on a real world meaning in relation to email forwarding. Chain-mail, which is emails that have been forwarded to multiple addresses, creates the issue of viruses being transferred from computer to computer, as well as predators retrieving email addresses from the forwarded emails and using them to send spam, also known as junk email to those chosen email addresses. Spam or junk email comes in many different forms, from the less invasive advertising junk emails, promoting company products, to infectious spam which includes fraudulent websites to even viruses and tracking cookies. Some private entities forge copyrighted company logos and signatures to create a realistic replica of the genuine company. Many of the spam emails include URLs which are links to websites that are promoting this usually spoof product. The most common junk emails used to obtain personal details are advertisements for Viagra-type drugs and Rolex watches. Spam is also a medium for fraudsters to scam users to enter personal details on fake websites, usually websites that look very similar to the genuine ones such as Bank webpages. This form of hoax emails and obtaining sensitive information is also known as Phishing.

Target Groups

Unfortunately in today’s technology based, mobile phone, computer and Internet friendly world, nothing is confidential. The age range that is most vulnerable to identity theft is generally teenagers accessing social networking sites or other non-specified websites that collect personal ‘contact’ details. The teenagers are aged from fourteen to nineteen years of age and stated that the majority of them spent between 3 and 9 hours a week on the Internet. 22 teens out of the 48 participating said that they didn’t use blogging websites; where as 14 of the 48 said that they did use blogs on a constant basis. This statistic demonstrates that this age group is more vulnerable to cyber predators because they are generally inexperienced in the field of confidentiality. In blogging session’s teenagers are generally more likely to post personal information than older age groups, because it is a simple way to communicate to friends and also because they don’t have the knowledge about cyber hacking and therefore they believe that their information is protected.

Humiliation and Exploitation

A proliferation of paedophile rings has arisen in the past couple of years. The cause of this may be the number of children posting sensitive information, and/or images on Internet sites to gain more popularity from peers. Although these images are unfortunately arriving in the wrong hands and are then manipulated and used as child pornography. Another new trend recently exposed is the use of ‘Sexting’. ‘Sexting’ is comprised of sending offensive multi-media picture messages to fellow colleagues, students or partners. A prime case is the investigation of Christy Lynn Martin, who was a trusted high school teacher and abused her role as an educational employee to send illicit images of herself naked to a 14 year old student. The Internet and society will never be safe from predators hacking into your private life to obtain sensitive information or spam gangs just trying to overload your email inbox with unwanted junk, this form of exploitation and invasion of privacy will continue into the future and will only get worse as technology becomes more advanced and complicated.