final-project-ceid100

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Protect Yourself on the Internet

Pravin Umakanth - Final Project - Post #3

Teenagers, specifically in today’s day and age, are very dependent on technology. They use it everyday to communicate with friends and family as well as completing assignments for school. It is critical for teenagers to understand how to safely navigate throughout the internet as they can be vulnerable to a lot of threats. One of the bigger risks that many, not only teenagers, face are scams. Through unwanted advertisements on websites, spam emails and stuff like that, you can click sites that essentially give hackers the access to your personal information through your laptop. With being so young, it might not be known to be cautious about sites that ask for personal information like your SIN number or addresses. If you are suspicious of something, or a site is asking things of you, it is important for you to speak to an adult to ensure that you are protected. Another major risk is your passwords. Although it is convenient to have the same username and password for everything, it is extremely unsafe. This is because, if someone guesses it, they now have access to multiple sources of information. They can get into your emails, your bank accounts and so much more. It is also just as important to make sure your passwords are strong and not related to you. Some people like to mix their names and birthdays or pet names, but the more unexpected variables that are included, the stronger the password. This means a variation of uppercase and lowercase, numbers, and symbols.

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Having a Good Understanding of Netiquette is Imperative to Effective Online Communication.

Pravin Umakanth - Final Project - Post #2

Especially in your teen years, many experience cyberbullying because of how it can be done from an anonymous user and easier to get away with. It is extremely important to keep in mind that behind that computer screen, there is a real person on the other end and to be kind to them. Although most of the cyberbullies believe they will get away with their actions as long as the accounts don’t have their names, everything on the internet can be traced which is important to realize. With this being said, having some privacy is essential by not posting all aspects of your life online. This is where your judgement would come into play as you have to decide what is something you are okay with everyone seeing even 5 years down the line. Netiquette is an important concept to understand and develop over time because when communicating online, it is hard to understand tone and things can easily be misinterpreted. A tip is to avoid using all capital letters so that it doesn’t come across as yelling. The same goes for punctuation as things online can easily be taken the wrong way so it is important to be as clear as you can be. Especially when communicating with people that would require more formal language such as teachers or employers, it is important to proof-read any lines of communication you have in order to avoid any misunderstandings and negative impressions that can be made due to grammatical errors as well.

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What You do And Publicize Online Reflect Who You Are as a Person

Pravin Umakanth - Final Project - Post #1

Growing up, everyone in my life has told me that the internet is forever. Every message, every picture and every thing on the internet will stay there forever. Which also means that if there is something that you are posting in the heat of the moment to hurt someone else, it is best to avoid posting it and take time for yourself. When you are seeking employment, your future managers will be looking through your social media platforms and the history you’ve made for yourself. All the mean or embarrassing posts that you wouldn’t want people to see, don’t post. Everything you put on the internet is a reflection of who you are as a person and becomes a part of your footprint online. It is important to build your brand as a person starting from a young age by being kind online and professional as well. A tip for developing your brand is to ensure that your footprint isn’t all about you, but what you believe in and stand for. To determine whether your online presence requires some help or cleaning up, you can google your name to see the pages that pop up in your name to see if these are a good representation of who you really are and who you want your employers to see you as. However, the most important thing is to be yourself in your most authentic form. You shouldn’t feel the need to be someone you’re not to appeal to others. Usually, putting up a fake persona can easily be detected and will leave a negative impression.

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A Separation Between Public And Private Identities no Longer Exists

Mohammad Nawabit - Final Project - Post #3

This idea is one that was brought about by Mark Zuckerberg during an interview he did, describing what he called “the facebook effect” as being one where there no longer exists a disconnect between your public and private identities; rather, an individual can only have one identity without being disingenuous and lacking integrity (see the image above from this article: https://michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/). While the I understand where he was going with the idea, I don’t exactly agree and certainly don’t think that there can’t be a disconnect between how you act publicly and privately online. This is exactly the reason why throwaway accounts for social media platforms like reddit and Instagram exist. As was mentioned in this article on making fake Instagram accounts (aka, finstas; see here: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-create-finsta-account/#:~:text=By%20creating%20a%20Finsta%20account,with%20keeping%20up%20appearances%20online.), the entire reason behind doing such a thing is so that you can speak your mind more freely without feeling like you are going to face heavy real-world repercussions for doing so with an account that is linked to your real world identity. The same can be said for the reason behind making a throwaway reddit account. Sometimes, people just feel the need to discuss uncomfortable or embarrassing topics that they don’t want associated with their main accounts as there are people who know them by their usernames (see here: https://www.howtogeek.com/414765/what-is-a-throwaway-reddit-account-and-how-do-i-create-one/). While there are a fair amount of negatives associated with making throwaway accounts that mainly affect businesses (see here: https://blog.sift.com/fake-accounts-consequences/); as long as they are not being used for something unlawful, throwaways are an invaluable tool for maintaining a disconnect between a public and private online persona.

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Inversely, The Way You Act in Person May Affect Your Virtual Life

Mohammad Nawabit - Final Project - Post #2

Let’s take this scenario for example; you are in a public coffee shop and get into an altercation in which you exchange unsavory words with another individual. Maybe you weren’t particularly in the wrong, but still handled it poorly. However, what you didn’t know was that the individual you had an altercation with was a seasoned software engineer that has a great degree of experience in many fields, including penetration testing. What ensues is this individual conducting a man-in-the-middle attack; essentially meaning that this person has taken control of your outgoing data and is now able to manipulate it to suit their purposes (see this nullbyte article for more details: https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/perform-advanced-man-middle-attacks-with-xerosploit-0384705/).

Normally, when you want to access information online, you make a request to the server which then returns the information you would like to view (as seen in the above image; see Mozilla’s documentation here for more details: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Getting_started_with_the_web/How_the_Web_works). However, with a man-in-the-middle attack, the data sent by the user is intercepted by the malicious actor and can then, for example, be redirected to a website they have spoofed to be an exact replica of the website you intended to visit so that they can harvest your credentials as you enter them (a.k.a., phishing). This specific attack is a DNS spoof/hijack attack and can prove to be extremely dangerous as virtually all unencrypted network traffic is at risk of hijack (see this article for more details: https://doubleoctopus.com/security-wiki/threats-and-tools/dns-spoofing/#:~:text=DNS%20spoofing%20is%20a%20type,one%2C%20or%20they%20can%20simply).

While there exist numerous ways in which man-in-the-middle attacks can be conducted (see here for more examples: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/man-in-the-middle-attacks-a-cheat-sheet/), the point of the entire example (as extreme of an example as it is) was to show that even small public altercations can have such a big impact.

(This photo was drawn by me, Mohammad Nawabit, using reference information from the articles listed above)

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The Way You Conduct Yourself Online Can Have a Tangible Effect on Your Life.

Mohammad Nawabit - Final Project - Post #1

The way you conduct yourself online can not only have a direct impact on your life, but a negative one depending on the circumstances. The instance depicted in the image above proves exactly that, whereby a seemingly normal interaction on twitter was widely spread in a matter of hours and days and resulted in an individual who had just been accepted for an internship at NASA losing said internship. This is what I view as being one of the most important reasons for being able to distinguish between good and bad netiquette (internet etiquette). The interaction above served absolutely no purpose whatsoever, yet it still occurred and still resulted in a negative outcome. While Homer later realized that his responses could likely cost this individual the internship and took down his posts to avoid that outcome, it was ultimately the friends of the individual that caused the internship offer to be rescinded as they were the ones to spread this interaction online and garner it the attention that it got. This not only shows that Homer is extremely aware of how his actions online can have a tangible effect on the lives of others, but also demonstrates good netiquette as he was polite during the interaction (even when met with a negative response) and afterwards (whereby he attempted to avoid having the individual lose their internship by removing the posts he had made). Overall, I would say that Homer has set a great example of how to approach online interactions and etiquette.

Link to article: https://people.com/human-interest/woman-loses-nasa-internship-over-tweet/