CST 20363 Session 6 Cyberspace

Editor's Notes

• #14: The next section contains more specific tips on how to use technology responsibly, especially as a college student.
• #16: To minimize your risks, you can start by keeping your computer clean and protected from online threats. Downloading reputable and comprehensive security software is critical. Be sure that it’s enabled and runs on a regular basis to check for threats or problems. It should go without saying that bypassing or disabling these functions defeats the purpose of having the software in the first place. For example, it may be annoying to have to repeatedly tell your internet browser that a certain kind of pop-up window is not a threat, but disabling the feature entirely can cause more problems than eliminating the annoyance was worth. It’s also crucial to keep this software updated, as threats change constantly and the software needs to be updated to handle new problems that pop up. You can set these things to update automatically, and it’s a good idea to do so. Your laptop isn’t the only device that needs protection from potential security threats. Any web-enabled device can be vulnerable, including smart phones, tablets (iPad), game consoles (Xbox, Playstation), e-readers (Kindle, Nook), etc. Don’t forget to use your security software to scan and clean up external devices like flash drives, external hard drives, etc. These items can become infected with viruses, malware, and spyware as well, and are often more vulnerable because (1) they may be plugged into multiple computers over time, some of which may be public and not subject to security as rigorous as your personal computer; and (2) they’re not usually automatically scanned and protected by security software.
• #17: Be savvy when it comes to connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots. Although many businesses offer free Wi-Fi, not every network is set up the same, and some may present significant risks to your devices. Pay attention to where the Wi-Fi you’re connecting to is coming from. If it’s provided by a business as a perk to their customers (especially if it requires a password) then it’s probably safer than some random network you can’t identify the source of. Make sure that your security settings on your computer are more stringent when connecting to a public network. Designate any Wi-Fi network you don’t personally control the security of as a public network to ensure that your computer is not sharing your personal information with unsecured networks. You can also set it so your device does not automatically scan and/or connect to networks without you first searching for and selecting them. If you’re on a public network, make smart choices about the information you access and transmit. For example, watching funny animal videos on YouTube carries minimal risk, but making an online purchase with a credit card is a much riskier thing to do. Protect your money by always checking whether a website is security-enabled before entering any kind of financial information for banking or shopping transactions. The web address should say https:// or shttp:// to indicate that the site takes additional measures to secure your information. (The s stands for secure.) Sites starting with simply http:// are not secured. Using strong passwords is critical to protecting yourself online. (More about passwords on the next slides) In addition, many websites and online accounts also offer additional identity-verification and security measures, which you should take advantage of.
• #18: Practicing excellent password security can go a long way toward keeping your information safe. Here are some key tips: Create strong passwords: It’s easy to find guidance on how to create a strong password. Many colleges provide guidelines and examples, and some even require your password to meet certain criteria in order to be accepted by the campus system. The key is to create something that is easy for you to remember but is extremely difficult for others (or a computer program) to guess. Passwords should be at least 8 characters long, preferably more. The longer it is, the harder it is for a human to guess or for software to crack. Passwords should include at least 3 of the 4 different types of characters: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols/special characters. Do not include personal information in your password. Many people use information that is significant to them and thus easy to remember, but these things are also easy for someone to find out. Your phone number, birthday, graduation year, names of pets/family/friends, favorite team/movie/book/band/etc., address, license plate number, make/model of vehicle, etc. should all be off-limits. If you can find the word in the dictionary, then a computer program can easily guess it. The same goes for any proper name. Be aware that you will not outsmart hackers by spelling a password backwards or substituting common symbols or misspellings. (e.g., regrubeseehc instead of cheeseburger; 3L!z@b3t4 instead of Elizabeth, etc.)
• #19: The company that compiles this list bases it on passwords that have been posted by hackers and releases it yearly “in an effort to encourage the adoption of stronger passwords.” Source: “Scary Logins: Worst Passwords of 2012 – and How to Fix Them” from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb10046001.htm and also referenced in “The 25 most common passwords of 2012” by Chenda Ngak, CBS News, 10/24/2012. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57539366/the-25-most-common-passwords-of-2012/)
• #20: Change passwords regularly Some college computer networks (or other systems) require you to change your password at regular intervals. Even if yours doesn’t, you should get into the habit of changing all your passwords every so often. You don’t have to make drastic changes, but at least a few characters should be different. Use a different password for every account Given the large number of online accounts that most people have, this can seem like a daunting proposition. However it actually doesn’t have to be. The password you use don’t have to be completely random or drastically different from each other, as long as there’s no easily discernible way that they relate to each other. The important thing is that if someone gains access to one of your accounts by guessing or hacking your password, they should not be able to use that same password to access any of your other accounts. Furthermore, you can use a password manager to keep track of them all in case you forget. (See next tip…) Store passwords securely The old advice given by security professionals (back when people only had 1 or 2 passwords to remember) was to never, ever write your passwords down anywhere. However, based on that advice, too many people chose extremely easy-to-remember – and thus extremely easy-to-guess – passwords (such as “password” or “123abc”). As a result, the newer advice is to write down your passwords if you need to do so in order to use strong, secure ones. However it’s crucial to store your passwords securely. One option for this is to write them down and lock up the paper somewhere away from your computer. For college students, this might be in a lockbox in your room or somewhere at your parents’ house. Another option is to use a reputable password manager app/software. Many of these exist, and plenty of them have excellent reputations and track records for keeping customers’ data safe and secure. If you use an app like this, you only have to remember one password at a time, because you store the rest of them in the app and log in to see what they are anytime you need to log into a different account. Provided that you use secure software from a reputable company and that you use an extremely strong password to secure your password manager account, this is a great option. However, in the wrong hands, it can also be a disaster for you and a windfall for a criminal. Do not share your password with anyone This also applies to letting someone use your account, even if you logged in yourself and didn’t actually tell them the password. Unless you’re standing there watching what they’re doing the entire time, you don’t have any idea what they’re doing, and yet you’ll be responsible for any consequences stemming from their actions. Choose security questions and answers wisely Many websites and online accounts require you to answer security questions. These are intended to allow you to access your account if you forget your password and sometimes to provide an additional layer of security by requiring you to answer them when you log in from a computer with a different IP address than the one you created the account from. It can be tempting to choose easy questions and answers – after all, if you’ve forgotten your password and need access to your account, you don’t want to run the risk of being locked out forever because of your security questions. However, this can be just as dangerous as having an insecure password. Many security questions ask for information that is either easy to find or that many people who know you would have access to. (e.g., What is your father’s middle name? What is the name of the hospital where you were born? What make and model was your first car?) Some even ask for information where there are only a few possible answers, meaning that they can be guessed quickly with no knowledge about you at all. (e.g., What month is your parents’ wedding anniversary? What is your youngest sibling’s birthdate?) If given the option, make up your own security question, and choose one that is meaningful to you, won’t change over time, and won’t be known by anyone else. Then give a specific answer. Good examples include: “Where were you when…?” some specific life event occurred, such as you had your first kiss, your first speeding ticket, etc. Be specific in the answer – don’t just say “at school” or “Milwaukee.” “What is the first name of the person whose middle name is…” People’s middle names are less commonly known and harder to search for than their first names. As long as you don’t choose an immediate family member or someone with a well-known or extremely unusual middle name, this should work. “What was the name of your second…” Many security questions ask about “firsts”…your first boyfriend/girlfriend, first pet, etc. It’s much less common for people around us to be aware of the second of these things. (Source: Information and examples given in the security questions section are copied from or based on advice and examples from: http://geekswithblogs.net/james/archive/2009/09/23/how-to-pick-a-really-good-security-question.aspx)
• #21: Social networking sites have become extremely popular over the past decade. They have many benefits, including being a great way to keep family and friends updated on your life and to connect with colleagues and communities that share your interests. You can use social networks to build a positive reputation that will follow you both online and offline. But it’s very important to stay safe! To safely share information on social media, consider the following… Instead of seeking to amass the most friends/followers/connections online, consider limiting access to only those people with whom you would actually want to directly share the information you post. Privacy settings are great, and you should use them. However, don’t rely solely on those settings to protect your information. If you assume that only the people you are directly connected with on the social media site with have access to the information, then you’re putting yourself at risk. It’s better to work under the assumption that others may be able to see or access the information and then only post what you’re comfortable sharing with a wider audience. Remember, you don’t have to be the victim of a security breach for your posts to gain a wider audience…it could be as simple as one of your friends/followers re-tweeting what you shared or showing your post to someone else who’s nearby. A good rule of thumb: If you don’t want something to be public knowledge, don’t post it! When deciding what you should share online, allow yourself to make the choices with a clear, level head. This means not posting in the heat of the moment when you’re particularly emotional about something. Remember that once you post, it’s out there. You don’t want a momentary lapse of judgment or impulsivity to cost you more than you were willing to risk. Another aspect of this is avoiding posting while under the influence of anything that may lower your inhibitions, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, or peer pressure. Finally, learn to evaluate your social media presence with a critical eye. It’s important to be aware of how the things you post are perceived by others, including peers, parents, teachers, employers, and more. Remember that the way to intended for something to come across may not be the same as the way it reads online. And although you can always attempt to explain yourself later, you may not get the chance to change the impression you’ve created.
• #22: The concept of good citizenship is probably familiar to you already. What are some things that the phrase “good citizenship” makes you think of? [Allow students to briefly brainstorm what they associate with good citizenship.] In general terms, you may consider good citizenship to be anything related to demonstrating respect for our surroundings and the people in those surroundings. There are many possible components to this. Some may include: Becoming well-informed and educated so that you know what the issues facing your community are and can generate ideas for solving the problems that arise Respecting legitimate authority, in ways such as obeying laws, rules, and guidelines established by authority figures. This, of course, assumes that the authority is legitimate and there’s no abuse of power occurring. Being involved and engaged in your community to promote a sense of community and the welfare of both the community and the individual people/groups within it. This could take many forms. Some may be overt and structured, such as volunteering in ways that help you “pull your weight” in improving the community. It can also be less formalized and simply pertain to the attitudes you hold. (Of course those attitudes should also be reflected in your overt behaviors as well.) Treating yourself and others with respect. This would include cooperation and positive regard of others, as well as making decisions that reflect this respectfulness. This would hopefully result in strengthening the bonds between yourself and other people/groups as well as the community overall. Treating your environment with respect can be as simple as picking up litter or refraining from walking over newly-planted grass. Finally, this includes helping others who need support when you are able to do so and in the ways that you are able to do so. This may be anything from doing a small kindness for an acquaintance who just got some bad news to creating a social advocacy group aimed at changing the world on a large scale – and anything in between. This is not necessarily related to any kind of financial support – it only requires being willing to contribute to the world around you in a positive way based on the strengths, talents, and resources you have and can spare. This also ties into the idea of protecting your community – the people in it individually and the larger community as a whole. Standing up for what you know is right and resisting pressure and intimidation is a concept in good citizenship that is related both to the idea of respecting yourself/others/environment and to the idea of supporting those who need help. (Sources of citizenship info: http://charactercounts.org/sixpillars.html; http://www.goodcitizen.org/) The concept of good citizenship applies on the internet to the communities you encounter there, as well as to your local communities (e.g., school, town, etc.). Although it’s not a physical place or location, being so connected to others online allows us to form many communities within a huge global community.
• #23: The internet allows us to be highly interconnected, which makes us interdependent. This is a wonderful thing because it allows us to connect with people and resources we would otherwise never have access to and allows us to do things more efficiently and quickly than ever. However it also means that we’re interdependent on each other and we can each have a significant impact on other people and communities despite potentially being on opposite sides of the globe. If you understand and appreciate the potential you have to impact others through your actions online, then it may help bring the “right choices” into clearer focus. Your decisions affect not only you, but possibly also millions of other people. For example, consider that depending on how your college’s computing resources are set up, it may be possible for one person to illegally download something (like movies, music, etc.) but for the university to be unable to determine which user it was. Although many college networks are set up to avoid this, there are plenty of college students with enough technical know-how to misdirect the investigation into who pirated the material. As a result, students who were not involved can potentially be blamed; entire campus communities can also be subjected to intense scrutiny due to the actions of one or a few individuals. Cyberbullying is another example of the effects of online actions, and is one that has been tragically in the news more frequently over the past few years. The impact that one individual or a group of people can have on the life of a peer cannot be overestimated. Being aware that the things you say, do, and share online have an impact that is just as tangible, and sometimes devastating, as those you undertake in person, is critical to being a good cyber-citizen. Respecting the laws, rules, and guidelines that apply online is another component of good cyber-citizenship. The biggest example of this for college students is piracy. Illegal downloading of music, movies, and other copyrighted material is prevalent and can be extremely tempting. Ad campaigns attempting to raise awareness of this issue have likened downloading music and movies illegally to walking into a store and shoplifting a CD or DVD. Although many students struggle to truly see these as the same thing, in the eyes of the law, they are equivalent. In addition, reporting cyber-crime helps the authorities to fight it. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov) is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center where people can report internet-related crimes such as fraud, hacking, identity theft, intellectual property rights violations, and more. You can also report violations to your local law enforcement, state attorney general, or the Federal Trade Commission (for fraud) as appropriate. Treating others with respect is a key component of good cyber-citizenship that applies in many different ways. The internet provides a measure of anonymity – it can make people feel like they can say or do things online that they wouldn’t say or do in “real life.” Remember that just because you aren’t seeing a person face-to-face doesn’t mean that what you say or do doesn’t have real consequences. Examples: Cyberbullying Comments sections on websites If you’ve ever played a video game online where you can put on a headset and talk to the people you’re playing with/against in real time during the game, you may have noticed some incredibly appalling things being said – profanity, racial/ethnic slurs, hateful and degrading insults, and more. Many of the people saying these things would never say anything similar in “real life” but feel anonymous and invulnerable when represented only by an avatar and a gamertag/screenname. Remember that just because you feel anonymous doesn’t mean that you really are anonymous. Finally, respecting others online also applies on social networking sites. Along with the ability to share anything we want to about ourselves comes the ability to share anything we want to about other people. However this is an ability that comes with a heavy responsibility for a good cyber-citizen. Respecting the people we’re connected to in our real lives and online involves knowing how they prefer to represent themselves online and never attempting to undermine their preferences. The “golden rule” (do unto others as you would have them do to you) that we all learned as small children applies to social networking too; it can be more clearly stated as “post about others only as they would post about themselves.” This includes: Respecting those who prefer not to have their photos posted online or have differing standards about privacy than you Not posting highly unflattering photos that the other person would be embarrassed by Not “outing” people for things they don’t want shared with others (e.g., when a friend tells you something in confidence that s/he is not yet telling everyone else, you should not post about or hint at it online) Respecting (reasonable) requests about untagging or removing photos or posts Understanding and appreciating that once something has been posted, you cannot undo its impact even if you remove it. There’s no way to know whether anyone else saw it before you removed it, and there’s nothing to stop anyone who saw it from taking a screenshot of it for permanent evidence that it existed. In addition, removing something online doesn’t mean that it’s immediately removed from the website’s records. [Note: This can be a somewhat contentious issue. Other potential viewpoints may include: - Any actions/words a person does/says in public are fair game to be shared on the internet. - Privacy is an archaic or overrated notion. - If someone does/says something they wouldn’t want to have shared online then it’s their own fault for behaving in a manner they would be ashamed of.] Regardless of whether your viewpoints in this area differ from the people you may be posting about, when a situation arises where you must decide whether to post something about another person, it’s important to consider what you are accomplishing by doing so. Are you embarrassing the person for the sake of being funny? For the sake of hurting their feelings? Are you trying to change their perspective about what to share online? Are you trying to get them in trouble with an authority figure? (e.g., posting evidence that would lead to sanctions from parents, school, or law enforcement) Are you trying to cause friction with peers? (e.g., posting evidence of cheating on a significant other or speaking poorly about someone behind their back)
• #24: _________ refers to whoever would be relevant in the situation. Important people to consider filling in the blank with: My parents My teachers (professors, guidance counselors, other school personnel, etc.) A potential employer A college admissions counselor or member of a scholarship application review committee My religious/spiritual authority figure (e.g., a clergyperson, Sunday school teacher, etc.) or the deity I believe in The police