I'd like to recall a personal story that applies to this topic so much. My email account was hacked, and a link was sent through a message to everyone in my email address book, which included one cousin who accidentally clicked on the link. This was a horrible occurance that could have caused a lot of trouble for her, as well as for me if I had clicked on the link when it had been sent to me.
My email address was on my Facebook account, and not saying that's how the hacker was able to get into my account, but it's just an interesting connection I thought about after completing this project with my partner.
Another realization is the danger we put our friends and family in, but more so for our family members, when we make connections online through various social networking sites. Many criminals (especially stalkers) use our accounts like Facebook to figure out who are important in our lives, so if we identify family members, and significant others and close friends, we potentially put them in harm's way.
This turns a great site for keeping in touch to a stalker's homeland. So much information is accessible if you don't have security settings, but since most stalkers are friends, acquaintences, and current as well as former partners, security settings won't even help for the worst of the worst. This poses an interesting thought: should we limit what we put on our accounts, or even delete them? Or would these criminals find a way to that information in other ways as well? Is this kind of crime inevitable no matter WHAT we have online? That makes me pretty terrified for sure.
If you didn't read my previous blog post, please do, so you can see the statistics and information that lead me to these conclusions and things to ponder about.
No comments:
Post a Comment