Safety with Technology and the Internet

            In our digital safety project, my group focused on the topic of pharming,phishing, and vishing. All are attacks used by hackers to extract personal information about their victims, such as bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, and more. Before working on this assignment, I had only known the names of these crimes, not how to define them. I encountered some of these before, such as suspicious e-mails promising me thousands of dollars in exchange for access to my bank account and odd telephone calls from who claimed to be an agent of the FBI or some similar organization. However, I was not aware of what exactly those scams were and how big a threat they actually pose.

            According to Brody, Mulig, and Kimball (2007), “In January 2006, there were 17,877 cases reported. This is the largest number ever recorded and that figure is 50 percent higher than the previous year” (p. 50). And that number has only been growing since then. With the sheer number of cases out there, it is important for not only teachers but also their students to be aware of these crimes and how to protect yourself from them. Students are especially susceptible to pharming, phishing, and vishing because they are still young and may not be tech-savvy enough to protect themselves from attacks. Also they spend a significant amount of time using the Internet and social media. As Moreno, Egan, Bare, Young, and Cox (2013) stated, “Internet safety is highly salient for today’s youth as they spend up to 10 hours a day using various forms of media . . . The vast majority of adolescents have internet access and most report daily use” (p. 1). Thus, teachers should take the responsibility of teaching their students how to be digitally safe. For myself, I would teach them by showing real-life examples and consequences of different threats, so they are aware of that it can most certainly happen to them at any time.

            The other introduced topics of this digital safety project, cyberbullying, fair use & copyright laws, sexting, textual harassment, and privacy, are also highly important for everyone to know, especially teachers. These are all part of the daily life of teachers and students in the educational system, and being ignorant of these can easily cause you serious consequences. There is not anything I can think of that I would add to this list for digital safety, as these are already significant enough to me.

            In my opinion, this digital safety project was an eye-opener for me and greatly benefitted to my knowledge of technology. I now know more about educational subjects I had not given nearly enough thought into, and I feel better prepared for using technology and the Internet safely. Unfortunately, my group did not use any web conferencing tool to work on this assignment, as we did not find the need to use them. However, I do see the advantages to uses the tools introduced in class, and I think they will certainly prove useful in the future. There is not anything I would suggest to change for this assignment because it has already proved helpful to me and hopefully to my fellow classmates.

References

Brody, G., Mulig, E., & Kimball, V. (2007). Phishing, pharming and identity theft. Academy of Accounting & Financial Studies Journal, 11(3), 43-56.

Moreno, M., Egan, K., Bare, K., Young, H., & Cox, E. (2013). Internet safety education for youth: Stakeholder perspectives. BMC Public Health, 13(543), 1-6.