How To Protect Your Privacy And Security On The Web
The issue’s not paid its fair due. The social web’s here to stay, sure; but inherent in the fact that the internet and the web (never mind the term “social” for now) is so open; is so unregulated in every way, there’s actually a lot more harm than good that’s out there.
Google, it can be argued, is largely a banner ad company, selling clicks and text message sized ads on web servers that are full, for the most, of junk. And junk isn’t safe; it’s benign, like a tumor’s benign, but a tumor’s still a tumor. And junk’s still junk. And all that stuff you think is relatively harmless; well, it isn’t..
But it’s a Pandora situation, and it’s been done, and there’s no turning back. The powers that be, need to actually step in, but unfortunately, we’re going through a bit of a social economic catastrophe, and the only reason why this isn’t a global depression is because the United States is printing money like mad, so don’t expect the Federal government there to take a leadership role in invoking a few rules about this, until, well, something catastrophic happens.
I’m sure it will be some VIP that takes the bullet for the rest of us. It happens every day; somebody on Craigslist gets lured into a murderous trap; somebody’s raped by a “friend” she met off MySpace… But nothing really happens until somebody really “important” gets involved in one of these messes.
As it is, publicly accessible information on Facebook is telling enough; your name and your picture, that’s all you need. From there, you can cross reference a whole bunch of other sites, create false user accounts, and find a “back door” into a social network, like any proper hacker. The social web’s given “social engineering” (the security sense of the word, an approach born out of the 80s used to gain control of critical systems by playing the clerk that was at the desk) a whole new set of legs; and the criminals are flying off the handle.
